Wholeness

This is going to sound maudlin, but it isn't.

My mother was a bit agitated this afternoon. During the night, she evidently "stewed" about her funeral. During the past six months three of her Ascension friends have died, the most recent last week. She has seen the bulletins from and had conversation about all three funerals, must have studied the most recent bulletin yesterday, and was truly troubled that her funeral would be like theirs' --- traditional funeral order of service with no real personalization and no short biography on the back cover.

I actually wasn't crazy about the standardized nature of those funerals either, but there were logical explanations. Arlene, who passed away in November, had a lot of close family but, for whatever reason, her children didn't want to participate in planning and left all he funeral arrangements up to the pastor. Sylvia was a childless widow, her closest family a brother-in-law. Jeanette, also a widow, had one unmarried daughter and some cousins. These women just didn't have family who could bring their life stories into the funeral service and, incidentally, the pastors were all new to Ascension who had not been there to learn their stories.

So Mom declared she wants her family front and center as liturgists, readers, communion assistants, musicians, and poets (Yes, Tom, she wants you to write a poem when the time comes!). True to her passion for genealogy, she wants it proclaimed that her grandfather Steffen, a pastor who died long before her birth, had a great influence on her as a lifelong Lutheran. She wants it known that she has worked with 14 pastors (so far--Ascension is still searching for our next pastor). She wants to be recognized for all the things she has done and been part of in her church life--but all her life, not just her years at Ascension. She doesn't want the standard 23rd Psalm and such, but does want a sermon text to be the "doxology" from Numbers that was the sermon text at their wedding. She no longer likes the hymns she identified years ago and agreed to look through a hymnal for new suggestions. She may have to rely on organist Jill to play....unless someone in the family can learn to play the organ in time :-)
At least Jill is adjunct family!

Of course, I assured her that certainly her entire family would be part of her funeral and it would be highly personalized and, of course, there would be a printed biography. As is usually the case, however, Mom's concerns today led me to think of a related topic.

Don't we all want to be known and remembered as "whole" people? Ken and I joined Ascension shortly before David was born and I began my "nine-year maternity leave". As much as I loved being an at-home mom, it bothered me a bit that people at Ascension---through no fault of their own---knew me only as a mom, not as a teacher, writer, or previously self-sufficient single adult. At Northbrook Junior High people often acted like that my entire career was at that school when I wanted to shout that, no, I had spent 15 years in Des Plaines. When I have to identify myself now as retired, I want to shout "Yes, but, I'm also......., have been...., plan to be...."

On Thursday I spent five hours in the car with a relatively new church friend, Lisa, as we drove a long way to see a pastoral candidate preach. As did I, Lisa married "late", had children "later" and, in spite of my own comments in the above parragraph, I thought of her primarily as a "mom" (who does work part time). Of course, in five hours we learned each other's life stories in depth and now we know each other as "whole" people.

How cool! And how "wholely" essential!