Recently, I attended the funeral of I man I had not known, present as a guest chorister, but not detached from the proceedings. Though sometimes I feel detachment might benefit me, I simply cannot achieve that distance. God has not built me that way. So, I got involved, did my singing, watched the faces of the grieving friends and family, and prayed with them.
They had lost this man at a fairly young age—according to the program, he was just a month shy of his fifty-seventh birthday. I couldn't help thinking of my own father as I looked to the family. He had been a few years older than this man was at his death, but sixty is still too young in an age when many people are living full, productive lives well into their eighth decade.
Three people had the task of delivering readings and the eulogy: a young man, and an older man and his wife. All were clearly grieving, especially the younger man. I wondered, fleetingly, whether death had touched his life very much yet, or if this were perhaps one of the first occasions. He stumbled a bit on his reading, and throughout the service, his face colored deeply from time to time, as if he wished to express himself with tears, but would not allow himself that release.
The older man, too, seemed to be struggling to rein in his emotions. His eulogy for his friend was so soft-spoken I only heard bits and pieces of it.
The woman, serene, gentle, and beautiful, betrayed nothing but a complete sense of calm. When she read the words, "rest in Jesus", there was no doubt in my mind that she knew Him, and the way she spoke the Name was like the gentle fall of rain on parched ground. Lovingly, she caressed every letter of the Name, not in any affected style, but honestly and sweetly, and no one with ears to hear could fail to notice.
A full Requiem Mass in the Anglo-catholic tradition is a lengthy affair, with much solemnity, including beautiful plainchants, and elaborate rituals for blessing the body, and absolving the person of sin one last time, before the body leaves the church, bound for cemetery or crematorium. Before those rituals are carried out, though, there is a glorious celebration of the Eucharist, and as the people come forward to receive, music.
We, the choir, do not always appreciate the music chosen. We just have to sing it, no matter what, and musicians are often disinclined to be kind about what the people want. In rehearsal, four of us heaved a sigh of relief when the communion piece, from a Roman Catholic songbook, was passed off to the fifth chorister, a tenor soloist, himself a Roman Catholic, who was familiar with the song. We could enjoy our plainchant and Palestrina, and this young man would be "stuck" with the piece that made us all squirm with its cozy sentimentality and pop song-like formula.
God blesses us when we least expect it, sometimes through the most unlikely media.
As the soloist worked his way through the piece, I became aware of another voice, singing with him, and in a moment of horror, wondered who would dare. Such a thing is simply not done. I thought the director, and maybe even the other choristers, must be having fits, and surely the soloist himself must be a bit taken aback.
But his voice rang clear and true, and the second voice, a woman's, carried the tune right along with him, steadfast and gentle.
I looked up and across the aisle, wondering if perhaps it might be one of the communicants, and saw it was the woman who had read earlier, sitting in the pew across from the choir, her eyes riveted to the soloist. No one had given her a copy of the song. She sang from memory, never faltering: "I will be with you in the silence…"
The rest of the words escape me now, and I cannot even recall the title of the song. What lingers in my memory is the thing which held me utterly transfixed: the expression on the woman's face. It told her whole story in a glance. She believed the message of the song wholeheartedly, and she wanted to tell her friend, and all who had gathered to mourn his passing. Not a trained voice, to be sure, but a sweet, natural one, which loves to sing praises, to "tell the story".
As the song went on, I found myself wishing it would never end. I would gladly have listened to this woman all day, pleading, "Tell me again, so I never forget!"
It was a humbling, but beautiful experience.
After the service, I hoped I would have a chance to tell her what a gift her singing had been to me. We came face-to-face in the narthex, two women who had never met before, and will probably never meet again in this life on earth, and flung ourselves into each other's arms, offering words of thanks for each other's music. And she told me this:
"I sang it for my friend in the hospital, when he was dying, and his family wanted me to sing it today. I wanted to, but I knew I couldn't do it alone. It would make me cry. But I love that song, because it really says it all."
"Yes, it does," I agreed, awed and humbled, as I recalled how the words described a whole lifetime of God's presence among us.
Yes.
And I am reminded, once again, since it bears repetition and reinforcement, that God transcends all the words we use, all the songs we sing, all the actions we take to approach the great, incomprehensible Mystery which is God.
"...Praised and exalted above all forever..."
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C.P. Warner
© 21 June 2000
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