THE OBITUARY
November 20th, 2005
Gary Harder
Text: 2 Timothy 1:1-14
The funeral service in the old box-like rural church could have been a replay from 30 years earlier. The obituary, read first in German and then in English, sounded like most obituaries do, the basic life-story told cryptically and read with little emotion, “This is the life story of Jake Willms, born in 1910 in the Molotchna colony in Russia”, intoned one of the lay ministers with dignity and sincerity. “Jake Willms immigrated to Canada with his family in 1924. At seventeen years of age he was baptized upon his confession of faith in Jesus Christ, when he was 27- years old he was united in marriage to Agnes Federo, his faithful spouse and companion who predeceased him three years ago. To their union were born five children, three sons and two daughters. Left to mourn his passing are, son John of the city of… “
Son John was hearing his own private obituary, hearing all the things that would not or could not be told from the heavy oak pulpit. “Did the people know” he mused, ” how obstinate and hard the old man sometimes was? Bull-headed and stubborn when it comes to religious matters, that’s for sure.” They had had their arguments; loud angry attacks on each other, especially when he had gone to university, one of the first in their village to leave the farm. Their relationship then had been strained almost to the breaking point.
They had of course been on good terms the last years, though sometimes the old anger still welled up within him when his well-reasoned explanations of what the preacher said in their urban church fell on deaf ears. Maybe both had mellowed some. Certainly he respected his father more now. “Eighty years old. Dad made it to eighty. Doesn’t seem as ancient as it once did.”
Jake Willms was from the old school; a good, diligent, hard-working farmer who had a simple, straight-forward no-nonsense faith in God. The Bible was plain if you read it literally and believed it and didn’t have your sons telling you they found mistakes in the holy writ. You read the “Kalendar Blatt” and said a prayer every morning at the breakfast table, and you went to church every Sunday listening respectfully and silently to the preacher, not questioning what he said like the younger generation did. Jake had stopped believing, or at least insisting, that God spoke only German some while ago already, but that’s about as far as his acceptance of modem religious thought went.
And so when John went to the University and came back with more questions than answers about faith, and when he talked about evolution and about respecting the Catholics, and voiced the opinion that worship services back home were sterile, outdated and guilt-oriented, the sparks flew.
Dr. John Willms, professor of Educational Administration. How had he come to make the University his home? “God knows I’m not a scholar”, he mused, “I’m an administrator, an organizer, I have the Mennonite work ethic. Slugged it through my dissertation on sweat alone, plus a lot of help from my wife. Even now Dr. Willms doesn’t sit well. I’m not even sure I’m a very good teacher any more. Some of the student evaluations the last few years have not been kind. Dad was proud of me. But he never was comfortable with me being at the University.”
For quite a while John hadn’t gone to church. But then he had married Elsie, a former Anglican who had managed to stay in the church at least till her confirmation, and after their three kids were born they did a bit of church shopping, and eventually sought out a local Mennonite church that seemed to be full of others who had also rebelled against the old style and had a minister who at least talked about some of the current issues, and they made it their church home. John and his wife had gradually and some-what reluctantly found their way back to a faith home, though in many ways it, was quite unlike what either of them knew from their own childhoods.
“Our kids won’t be forced to go to church,” John and Elsie had vowed. “They are going to be free to make up their own minds. As long as they are happy, that’s all we’re concerned about.” Their own somewhat new faith home was a satisfying thing for the most part, but also a puzzling thing because the old reactions kept cropping up John did believe in prayer, but he had never held family devotions. He and Elsie never prayed together, “Prayer is such a personal thing”, he rationalized, realizing all the while that he hadn’t really made it much of a personal thing either. And he still winced every time they sang a Gospel song in church, which wasn’t too often, thank goodness. But on the whole he and Elsie were relatively content — except that now his father’s death and funeral were awakening too many memories and too many long-buried feelings.
Jake, his father, had died well, there could be no doubt about that. He had been vigorous and strong till shortly before his eightieth birthday. Then the doctors had diagnosed liver cancer. He gradually weakened and matter-of-factly prepared to die, getting his financial affairs in order, even finally making out a will. While he could still get around he had gone to a distant neighbour to “make right” a small conflict that had simmered for some years, and had told the minister he didn’t want much talk about him at the funeral. “Don’t make it sound as if I was somebody they can’t recognize,” he had warned. Jake was at peace in this dying. “I’m looking forward to going home, to going to heaven to meet my dear Agnes,” he said simply and with deep confidence and conviction. Few doubts clouded his leave-taking.
John suddenly felt overwhelmingly grateful for this heritage of faith his parents had left him, though in truth he knew he could never claim the same absolute convictions himself. “I really fought with you,” John mused almost out loud. “I called you narrow-minded, simplistic, way out of touch with the modem world. But I always knew you had a solid core. I always knew your faith was real, something I could kick against and know it wouldn’t evaporate. I do thank you for that.”
Rev. Klassen started reading from the Bible. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down…” John’s mouth formed the words in perfect sync with the reading, and only with a sudden start did he realize that he knew the Psalm by memory. He almost wished that he had offered to read the text — no, not read it, recite it, a full dramatic recitation to do justice to how deeply his father had loved Psalm 23. “Mom and Dad made us memorize the Scriptures,” he remembered. “Our Sunday School teachers made us memorize Scriptures. One summer just to go to camp we had to memorize a whole list of Scripture. My own kids can’t tell the Old Testament from the New Testament.”
One of his own kids, sitting beside him in some turmoil, had also been composing her own obituary. Opa had been a walking contradiction to Mary, a bewildering mixture of stern beliefs and warm tenderness. Opa had used up his hard discipline on his own children, and the grandchildren got the tenderness, the gentle side, the devoted attention. It was clear that Opa loved her and that she loved Opa. But in so many ways they were worlds apart. Especially when it came to any kinds of beliefs, or faith.
Mary was of a different generation, not only of age but of ethos. She had married well, a very upwardly mobile engineer keen on enjoying big city life in Toronto. Now, 33-years old, two kids of her own, a good job as legal secretary, life was at its prime, too busy of course juggling job, home-making, the social scene and her love for the theatre, but life was supposedly good. Except that she didn’t consider herself very happy.
She had been born a bit too late, she often lamented. “I wish I had been a teen in the late sixties. Those were exciting times. Flower children, passion, protest, being anti-war, Woodstock -music had a meaning then.” Some of t
he passion of the times had trickled down to her, trying to resurrect a peace march or two, firing off various letters to various politicians, living for a while in Yorkville, Hippyville for some.
The one area of life though that had no room for excitement or passion or even conviction was faith. There she had imbued the spirit of her time — toleration, openness, vagueness. “Let everyone believe what they want”, which in her case, really wasn’t very much. “Strange,” Mary mused, ” that the only thing we weren’t supposed to have convictions about was our faith. How unlike Opa.”
Mary remembered Sunday School and remembered church. They certainly hadn’t learned much, and they generally had a good time having free-flowing discussions. At age 13 she had told her parents that she had had enough of silly beliefs and boring sermons and that she would henceforth put her Sunday mornings to better use -sleeping in her bed rather than on a pew. She was disappointed that her parent’s hadn’t fought with her on that. “I don’t think I’ve been in church more than half a dozen times since. Sonja’s baptism, a couple of Christmas Eve’s, my wedding, Oma’s funeral.”
The last two days at Opa’s death bed had raised extraordinary mixed feelings. She loved her Opa, felt tender and sorrowful grief welling easily to the surface. She marvelled at his quiet dignity, evident despite the laboured breathing and despite occasionally spitting up clumps from his lungs. But his sense of peace also troubled her, a discomfiting uneasiness kept breaking through her genuine appreciation of his good dying.
“Opa, you’re not afraid to die?” she finally asked. “I want to die Mary. I want to go home.” It seemed sometimes that the one who was dying was the alive one, and she the one who was dead, certainly empty, certainly not at all at peace. The old man glowed with hope. The young woman’s eyes were troubled by more than grief. There might have been a dreadful admission that God was present in that hospital room, but certainly Mary could not embrace that God.
“At 33 you shouldn’t have to have the foundations shake because you happen to love someone and he happens to die a good death, a leave-taking full of passionate faith. In all honesty the foundations have been shaking long before now,” Mary realised as she stood to sing “Take Thou my hand, 0 Father, and lead Thou me, until my journey endeth, eternally.” The shaking was already well under way. At 33 life was supposed to be full and rich and energized. But so often there was a disconcerting emptiness inside which any amount of busyness could only hide, not erase. They had the time and money for splendid vacations, for which they left exhausted and from which they returned exhausted. In her quieter moments Mary had evaluated whether she was reaching her goals, which she largely was, and whether she was really happy, which she largely was not.
What troubled her now, singing along in an unused and thin soprano, was that her 10- year old son and 8-year old daughter, standing uncomfortably beside her didn’t even try to sing along, had never heard the song before, had no idea even how to follow along on the page, could not follow that blur of notes. “I at least got something I could have chosen to build on. I know the song. I know why Opa loved to sing it. My kids have nothing. They have no spiritual roots. I have no spiritual home I can invite them into.”
At the graveside in the cemetery beside the church Rev. Falk read, “Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes, we commit to the ground the body of our beloved brother Jake Willms, knowing that he has gone to his eternal home with God.”
John and Mary hugged each other and wept.
(John 14:1-3)
(The creative idea for this story came from “Ministry to a Restless Generation”, by David Hansen, Leadership, spring 1990)