I Hate Funerals, But...

I hate funerals.  I guess we are all supposed to.

Yet, to this day I regret that when a very good friend died nearly 30 years ago, a suicide victim, his family chose not to have any sort of service after his remains were cremated. The circle never closed. Whatever value or meaning his life had was never addressed to those of us who cared for him. It was a bad decision.

Yesterday we attended the service of a cancer victim, a wonderful lady who taught high school Spanish for many years and spent her 15 years of retirement volunteering in all sorts of Christian and civic activities. Her name was Pat Allred and her chosen portrait for the funeral service bulletin was at age 70, right before her cancer hit, standing in a jumpsuit and harness, waiting to take her first and only leap from an airplane. She was good-hearted and vibrant, a special person to many, certainly including my whole family.

When I was writing my first Civil War novel, Whittled Away, I made one of the two main characters born of a Mexican mother and a Scottish father. That character’s name is Jesús McDonald, and he is still probably my favorite character in all my novels. Anyway, I would sometimes want him to speak a few words or a phrase in Spanish, and Pat Allred was my go-to resource to see if the computer and I had it right. She seemed flattered to be asked, and I was really grateful for her help.

Pat was Episcopalian so her funeral was in her church sanctuary. In Lockhart, the Episcopal Church is the oldest church building in a town full of old churches. The sanctuary is quaint and small and dates to the 1860’s. Too many of us crammed into too few pews, but no one fussed about it. The music and the liturgy was high church, with a soft crystal-clear solo of Ava Maria sung during Communion. The sermon-eulogy was brief and well-spoken. The last song probably didn’t fit, but we all joined in to sing “I’ll Fly Away” to send Pat off.

Then we went outside to the little garden next to the sanctuary for her sons to put the brightly painted Mexican ceramic jar containing her ashes into the niche already holding her husband’s ashes.

Finally, most of us walked a block around the corner and had a reception-wake in an old storefront that is now Lockhart’s only wine bar-music venue. I don’t know if the whole thing was pure Texas, but it was pure Pat.