I want to begin by apologizing to you for this letter as it is in fact a consequence of failing to write a traditional homily for your memorial service. While I imagine you never expect me to fit into the traditional category in any context, an open letter to you read at your memorial service seems outside the categorical system all together. I’m honestly not sure how you would feel about it but I want you to know that I did try. Over the course of the twenty-four days that filled the space between your leaving us and this moment right now I spent every car drive, evening prayer, and morning walk revisiting what I wanted to say at this pulpit only to keep getting stuck on the simplicity of the sentence, “I wish you weren’t gone.”
I have always believed that when a pastor preaches at a memorial service the words spoken have the potential to manifest the love and comfort of Christ in the heart of each hearer. My unspoken assumption has been that this is the purpose for which we gather; to create meaning that would bridge the emotional abyss formed in the loss of fluid everyday moments and the arrival of stagnant eternal memories. I imagine without the performance of ritual and the presence of a community to support it the risk becomes getting lost in this in-between; this place of no more and not yet.
The memorial sermon seeks to flood this gap with images of hope offered to us in scriptures. We lift up promises of rooms awaiting the arrival of each of us and the resurrection of our bodily remnants upon the return of Christ our Savior. We are wrapped in poetic stanzas lulling us into a momentary peace as we are reminded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is as if the loss death creates places each person in a major power outage in an artic storm. And we, either remembering a time when we experienced God as having been the great generator of warmth or perhaps not knowing where else to turn, find ourselves huddled together wondering how one life could break so many out of their homes and habits to be present in this precarious place we call Church. The pastors message at a memorial service, placed near the end of the service, initiates the opening of an emotional doorway toward a new experience of reality that is inclusive of all that was lost that once made life feel so real. This afternoon, Nell, I am writing to you because, while I am employed to cast a hope-filled vision of where you have now gone, I am hopelessly stranded in all the beautiful moments of while you were still here.
While you were here, Nell, I always looked for you. Wednesday mornings, through the glass windows of the church library room as if your presence in that room indicated to me that all in the world was as it should be. While you were here, Nell, I always waited on you. Sunday mornings, standing in the sanctuary doorway holding out for your warm smile and generous hugs. Hugs like medicine momentarily curing me of a lifetime sense of wondering where I belonged. While you were here, I always went with you, whenever you asked, until this time when the question wasn’t asked and the answer couldn’t be offered.
I’m not sure what it was about me that you loved me so deeply or to believe in me so faithfully but I will dearly miss your presence that had become solid ground for my soul in the relentless shifting of seasons. While you were here, perhaps you saw me as your pastor, but I know I loved you as my friend. I pray that one day when people gather to speak of where I have now gone, that like you, I will have loved them so deeply, that they falter in their final farewell, giving pause to the places where together we have been while stretching their hearts to imagine the beauty and feel the warmth of the place where one day we all will meet.
With all my love, my heart, my soul. Rest well, dear Nell.
Your pastor. Your friend.
Pastor Stephanie
