the daysman

Excerpt from funeral message based on Psalm 23, part 4.

And today she sits at the table he has prepared for her. What a joy and consolation.

The table David had in mind may have been the high flatlands of summer pasture, which the shepherd would scout out, pulling up poisonous weeds, looking for signs of wolves and bear. Sheep never think about all the preparation it takes to be led safely to pasture and back again, and David was probably not thinking about life after death.

But we are. When we read this, we also think of the table as our Lord’s table, and the communion of saints around the body and blood of Christ. This is a modest meal that points to the grand banquet of eternity, a feast he has indeed prepared. We come to the Lord’s table in remembrance of him, but also in anticipation of Him.

Mom is seated at His table now, and we are all glad. Much of our joy is in our assurance that she is beyond pain, in perfect peace, reunited with her husband and her mother.

But I can tell you this, none of that means very much to her right now. Her true joy is to be in the presence of Christ himself. Her face shines with the radiance of his glory, more than Moses’ did when he saw a sliver of God’s back on Sinai. She can see all of it, and that’s all she wants to talk about, or will ever want to talk about. There is no gossip in heaven. There is no recrimination. There is only the glory of God, and the grace of God, and the peace of God.

We can scarcely comprehend this, and we project on heaven the limitations of our own flawed imagination. But Scripture assures us that at this moment she is in fact just like Jesus, because she can finally and truly see him as he is.

We know so very little about this, but one eyewitness, Paul, who was caught up into heaven, said later that he was determined to know nothing among us, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In a single moment last Saturday mom understood more about the Shepherd and His Sacrifice than she accumulated in a life time of ministry or suffering.

Part of what she understood perfectly is that she does not sit at the table with the righteous because she was righteous, but because Christ is righteous and bore our sins in his body on the cross. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. She knew that. Now she understands it.

This fact is so amazing and humbling she may not even think about dad for a hundred years. She may not think about her pets ever.

In a single moment last Saturday mom understood how much greater her sin was than she imagined. Confronted with the glory of God, she cried, like Isaiah did, “Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

And in that same instance she also understood complete forgiveness and overwhelming grace, grace that is greater than all our sins. She stood up on strong legs once again and then prostrated herself before the throne of God. It was a moment of intense, blinding, ecstatic glory.

If she ever slighted you, in that moment her love for you became as pure as Christ’s. If you ever slighted her, her forgiveness became as deep as her Lord’s. If she ever blessed you in any way, it was a mere shadow of the grace of God she now enjoys. Like Paul, she wants you to know nothing except Christ crucified and glorified.

And yet we are still here, clinging to our sin and anger and fear while a flood of grace is upon is.

This is the great depth of the still waters. We pause here and are awed. We confess our sin and cry Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts.

In this truth alone the oil of gladness runs down our cheeks and our cup runs over. If we get this, goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life, and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We will say with David, and with Mom:

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Excerpt from funeral message based on Psalm 23, part 3.

He leads us beside the still waters.

He also leads us through dark valleys. For mom this was the loss of loved ones, both physically and emotionally. Sacrifice and suffering are our lot, and we are not alone. But the truth is, we are led there.

This is a truth we often miss and seldom understand. Our shepherd is with us in these dark times, but he also led us there. He glorifies himself in our pain. We minister to others through our suffering, and because of it.

Dad once wrote a book about this, which the publisher called The Brighter Side. But I liked dad’s original title better. He called it the Blessings of Affliction. In this study of 2 Corinthians, dad says we cannot know the comfort of God if we do not suffer, nor can we comfort others. He says how we suffer is part of our heritage. And he points to 2 Corinthians 1:9 where Paul tells us “we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”

We can look at mom’s life as a widow with many diseases, with all the emotional distresses she experienced and we can know that she was led there, and sustained there, by that great Shepherd of the flock, Christ himself. In leading her there, and in leading us there, we know the comfort of God and reveal the glory of God.

And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for he is with me; his rod and his staff, they comfort me.

Thanks be to God.

I wish I could tell you mom faced this last great valley without fear, but I can’t. She grieved her own death in her own way and she worried about her children and her grandchildren, all of them. But she did so with a measure of grace and courage. She asked everyone who came in the room if they knew Jesus, and the last day she spoke at all she thanked those who turned her and bathed her, acts of simple faith in a faithful shepherd who led her beside still waters and through dark valleys.

And today she sits at the table he has prepared for her. What a joy and consolation.

I’m officiating at mom’s funeral Friday. Here is part of what I need to say:

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On behalf of my mom, I’d like to thank you for being here today. She was a friend to many, and many are here today to honor her. And I honor you, for your faithfulness to her, your love for her, and your care of her.

In particular, I would like to thank the good people of Calvary Baptist Church who honored her as a pastor’s wife, long after the pastor left. Your continued financial support reflects a people of character and purpose. Our family will always be in your debt.

And I’d also like to thank a multitude of caregivers, among whom are Bob, Anne, Bill, Karen, Jennifer and Tracey. And Regina and Shirley, with Hospice of Jackson. I’m not sure it takes a village to raise a child, but I know by the end it took an army to care for mom, and I thank each of you.

And in a situation where much honor is due, as the first born and only son of a southern matriarch, I’d like to say I clearly know when I’ve been outranked. And so before we honor my mother I want to honor in particular four remarkable women who touched her life.

One of these is Joyce Riley, the wife of my dad’s best friend Dick. If Dad and Dick where companions in ministry, Mom and Joyce were companions in crime. Whatever it takes to be a pastor’s wife, they did it more or less together for over 50 years. Dick prayed for my sisters and I, and our children, by name for all that time. The relationship between our families is rich and meaningful. Thank you Joyce for sharing our journey.

My Aunt Mary is also here today. She has been a stabilizing force in our home before we even had a home, and I can’t imagine all the trouble she must of kept mom out of growing up in Naples. Mary has been the model of a big sister- faithful in her care and concern, gracious in her forgiveness and patience. Whenever I think of a true Southern lady, I think of my Aunt Mary and her remarkable grace.

My wife Katie is a Yankee of course, a fact mom eventually was able to overlook. In the first three years after dad died, Katie made over a dozen trips here to care for mom, sometimes two or three weeks at a time. For the last ten weeks Katie has ministered to mom’s physical needs as faithfully as she did for her own mom. In fact, mom was the fourth elderly person we have cared for at life’s end, and Katie’s is an uncommon grace. Care giving is her vocation, a reflection of her giftedness and calling. Thank you so much, my dear friend, for your selfless care of my mom. And of me.

Actually, caring for mom since her stoke ten years ago has been a vocation in itself, and since long before Dad died my sister Toy has served mom with unfaltering devotion. This goes far beyond checking the mail, maintaining the house, feeding the animals, paying the bills– all the things we might normally expect and in which Toy and her family have been faithful. Mom was a woman of immense emotional range, caring deeply and passionately about the hurts of others, both real and imagined. When she had exhausted herself in caring for others, Toy cared for her. It was exhausting work, refilling the cup of mom’s emotional reserve time and time again. Throughout this long ordeal, Toy has called mom her hero. But for her faithfulness, Toy is a hero in her own right. And I honor her this morning.

These four women are faithful players in a cast of hundreds, including three children and their spouses, a dozen grandkids, and everyone here this morning. Each in their way and in their own time has played a part. And now the curtain has fallen, and we are about the business of striking the set.

I applaud you, for whatever role you’ve played.

It’s been a great show.

One of these mornings
You’re going to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings
And you’ll take to the sky

From Summertime, George Gershwin

The Tamiami Trail was finished in 1928, five years before my mom was born. It was an amazing feat for its time, built across an impenetrable swamp over 12 years at the cost of $8 million and 3 million sticks of dynamite.

Traveling south from Tampa to Naples and then through the Everglades to Miami, this highway opened up a new vista for my mom, whose Dad owned a restaurant and a liquor store at the “Four Corners” where the road heads east across the state.

This route probably cut 12 hours off the trip to Key West, a trip that over a lifetime became her favorite. Not only can you see alligators and exotic wading birds, you can buy a stamp at the nation’s smallest post office, and, if you take the loop through the Big Cypress National Preserve as she often did, you might see an otter or a panther or a bear. Once you got to the Keys, you could swim with the dolphins.

At some point in her childhood this adventure became imprinted on her mind, the ultimate road trip. She was always one to hit the road, whether it was traveling from Naples to Kent, Ohio, to see my great aunt before there was a freeway, or, in recent years to the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World in Plant City.

But it was no surprise Saturday when she announced firmly that she wanted to go to Key West and tried to get out of bed. She had been saying over and over again she wanted to go, and we weren’t sure where. But in a moment of conviction and clarity she finally told us where she wanted to be, not just in her dreams but in reality.

One of her treasured memories is of her last trip to the Keys with my dad, and I’m glad my sister and her family took her there on a vacation two years ago. Mom was in a wheel chair by then, but she told me often it was best trip ever, as everyone fished and kayaked and watched the blue, blue sea.

Tuesday her agitation that she couldn’t go again, and wouldn’t go again, was earnest and troubling. She tried to climb out of bed again, and couldn’t, and cried. I did too.

“Heaven will be better than Key West,” I assured her, a truth neither comforting nor credible in her pain. Finally she fell into a fitful sleep, exhausted, and I sat beside her late into the night, singing Summertime, from Porgy and Bess. It seemed fitting, since it was a song she sang on the road when I was very young. I was pretty sure daddy wasn’t rich, but she was good looking. I felt safe then. And it was comforting now.

She squeezed my hand, perhaps for the last time. Since then she’s fallen into a deep, mostly peaceful sleep, and now does not recognize us or respond. I sang some more, mostly lullabies, including Wayfaring Stranger, a song I’ve always sung to my own kids, and hope one day one of them will sing to me.

It’s about the road trip that matters:

I know dark clouds will hang ’round me,
I know my way is rough and steep
Yet beauteous fields lie just before me
Where God’s redeemed their vigils keep
I’ll see my father and my mother
They said they’d meet me when I come
I’m only going over Jordan
I’m only going over home

Only. Only going over Jordan, a mercy for us all.

This last weekend mom entered a stage the hospice nurse referred to as “terminal restlessness.” She is often anxious, kicking off her covers and trying to get out of bed. She has short periods of clarity and longer ones of confusion. And even longer ones of sleep.

She isn’t the only one who is tired. We’ve hired some help and started taking breaks, leaving the house when we can. Other times we rest while the aide reads to her or watches her sleep. Medicines have to be adjusted. New rhythms adopted.

But for mom, part of this seems to be about revisiting the past. My grandfather bought a cow dip for his farm, apparently. I remember the farm, 150 acres near Marco Island, but I never saw a cow there. When we lived there for a few months while I was in junior high, it was acres and acres of watermelon.

There’s lots of childhood stuff here (hers not mine). When she was a girl her dad, Jack Prince, owned the pharmacy, the grocery store, the liquor store, the restaurant and the taxi company in Naples, Florida—so much of this is tangled and forgotten, bubbling to the edge of her consciousness, manifested in fragments of thought and whorls of emotion.

And there are the Everglades, rides in air boats and swamp buggies, deep in the cool dark dampness of the river of grass. She tries to make me see, but I can’t. And there is of course the endless beach. I remember her taking me to ride on the back of sea turtles, returning to the gulf after laying their eggs along the shore. I remember the sacrifices she made to take us to a cottage on Fort Myers beach each summer.

But what does she remember? Emotions are a roller coaster, as she exhausts herself in the work of sorting out the stuff we can only sense. And there are cryptic sentences, repeated endlessly, stuffed with pronouns that have no antecedent and verbs that have no object.

In her clear moments we cannot revisit these mysteries. They are lost to her as well, and I get the sense I never knew her at all. What troubles her in the night? Who are these people she calls by name? What visions haunt her and which ones bring her joy?

At 14 she drove a cab barefoot along 5th Avenue. At 18 she was the swamp buggy queen, and got to kiss the winning driver when he climbed out of the mud. For 50 years she was a pastor’s wife, teaching Sunday School to teens and women and leaving secret notes in their Bibles. At 74 she is dying in my living room, remembering it all. Or none of it.

Memories slip into the past, harder for her to grasp and impossible for me to capture. They are wrinkles in her brain, terrors in her past, stars in her crown. We wait, hoping new meds will give her rest.

And trusting God to give her peace.