Trigger warnings: Discussions of death and mass shooting events.
I wrote the “Before” and “During” sections of this blog post, then went six months without touching or reading this piece.
When I started this blog post in September 2022, days after my mother died, I didn’t know what story I wanted to tell. There was no goal, no allegory, no hidden meaning, no narrative. I didn’t necessarily expect to have some kind of personal epiphany or closure by writing this. But I think that I was hoping to.
In September 2022, I didn’t have that closure. But in the six months since, I have found resolution and closure. Well, certainly not entire resolution and closure, but maybe a little.
September 2022
In the days leading up to my mother’s funeral, I reflected on being a secular person in a religious world. And maybe there are American theists who will tell you that this is not a religious society, and that worldliness has surpassed godliness. But I found myself operating in a space where Christian religiosity was taken as fact. This was a headspace I hadn’t been in in at least a decade. I knew going in that the service would explain death entirely through the framework of Christianity as truth.
And as a person who does not share the same worldview, I didn’t know what emotions I would experience at her service. I didn’t know if her funeral would provide the closure I felt like I needed.
There are three parts to this blog post: my off-the-cuff feelings leading up to her funeral, a couple reflections of the service itself, followed by the reflections I had much later. Re-reading the “Before,” I realize the anger I felt. Maybe this is anger at organized religion, for-profit medicine, or a misplaced manifestation of taken-too-soon-ness. And I hope this doesn’t stop folks from getting to the “After,” because the tone of these sections are quite different.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
As I write this, I’m thinking about what I’m going to wear to my mother’s funeral service tomorrow. I was close with my mother, and obviously I’m still processing a lot of it.
Knowing she was going to die from ALS, she and my dad prepared some (not all) of the details of her funeral service. The biggest being that mom explicitly wanted everyone in attendance to wear pastel-colored clothes (I don’t think I own any).
She also requested the venue, their family church, and for a family friend/pastor to speak; I’m guessing he’ll give a well-spoken, heart-felt, prepared sermon about “death is not the end, but the beginning of life through Jesus,” etc.
I’ve gotten my hands on the program my family has worked hard to put together. Some songs my mother loved will be played and performed. Bible verses she requested will be read by her closest friends. And there will be a call-and-response oral recitation of traditional Lutheran funeral rites.
And I’m going to say this in spite of the overwhelmingly negative reactions I’ll get from some readers: I’m pretty annoyed by the whole thing. As a person who has found immense satisfaction in life through atheism (I’ll write more about this someday), I know that this service is not going to be a welcome part of my mourning and closure process.
Obviously I’m going to attend. That was never a question. I loved my mother, and I’m attending the service out of respect for her. It’s not all about social pressure.
But who am I to complain? I did not ask to be on the planning committee. Neither have I raised my voice to be a participant. And I’m not upset by this, I want to make that abundantly clear. Quite the contrary, I’m very thankful to my family for doing this. In spite of their grief, full time jobs, and social obligations, they have organized an event that will be attended by a couple hundred people who are driving and flying in from across the country.
(Aside: While writing this, I know how stinky my take sounds, and how ungrateful I must appear, especially to the friends of my mother who lurk my digital whereabouts from the shadows of Facebook. It reminds me of my response to the mass killing of concert-goers in Las Vegas in October of 2017 I wrote for Facebook.
My sister was in attendance for the Route 91 music festival that year with several of her coworkers. 60 people died that night and nearly 800 were injured; it is the largest mass shooting committed by an individual in US history. Though my sister only suffered minor physical injuries, the friends she went with were less fortunate.
As soon as I knew she was safe, I pounded the last third of a bottle of whiskey and vented my frustrations to the largest audience I could amass: my 500ish Facebook friends. I wrote about the ineffectiveness of thoughts, prayers, and vibes; I called out Republicans as being complicit pieces of shit; I told people that if they weren’t voting for greater gun control that they were part of the problem.
Now, going all the way back to the MySpace days, my attitude about social media was that I was creating a public persona that anyone was welcome to follow. I indiscriminately approved anyone who wished to follow my profiles - this included my mother’s church-going/Evangelical Christian/Republican friends.
And as you can guess, the only five words they could remember from my post were “I don’t want your prayers.” This must have touched a nerve with multiple women who reported their concerns to my mother, who chose not to be my friend on Facebook. She was so upset, and maybe more disappointed in me that day than she had ever been. [Reflecting five years later, I stand by everything I said in that post. Please vote, and Republicans are still complicit pieces of shit.]
Because of that experience, I’m worried [but only slightly] that some segment of my reading audience is going to gloss over the context of this post. There may be a selective memory of the words I’ve written, which could be used to paint a picture of an ungrateful, selfish boy. I can only hope my ability as a writer has sharpened to convey greater context).
Who are funerals for?
This isn’t a novel question to ask. But I’m faced with answering this for the first time. Are funerals for the dead? Which would mean the living are left to plan something the person who died would have wanted?
Or are funerals for those who they are survived by, and the way the living want to mourn should be taken into account?
If the answer to those two questions create distinct categories that all funerals fall into, then the funeral I am attending tomorrow is certainly the first.
My sisters, brother, sister-in-law, and dad have created an agenda in the spirit of my mother. Tomorrow’s service incorporates elements of what they assume my mother would have wanted. I know they are on the right track because of the unique situation of my mother requesting several of these elements.
It’s worth reiterating that I’m not upset that my mother’s funeral is about her and her wishes. It certainly isn’t about me. But I have this weird feeling that I have to pretend to be religious tomorrow, and that does annoy me. If I don’t say the prayer aloud and bow my head, will I draw the ire of my mother’s closest friends? If I don’t sing the songs and believe the message, will I upset my family?
Far beyond the scope of my singular experience tomorrow, I wonder if it is normal for nonreligious people to feel alienated at these kinds of funeral services.
Further, do secular funeral services alienate religious people to a lesser, similar, or greater extent?
I don’t know if I have answers to any of these questions (sorry to disappoint). Mourning is different for everyone. But all I know is that I feel like my mother’s service tomorrow will not be the best way that I can effectively seek the emotional closure I am so desperate for today.
My dad asked us to arrive at 9:30 AM. We woke up at 9. Great start.
And don't forget, we have a four-week old baby.
I still didn’t have anything to wear, so I texted my brother. He traveled from across the state to be there, and slept at my parent’s house. It’s a wonder he had a spare shirt for me.
What a bizarre day it was.
It was a Friday morning, and in spite of it being a traditional work day, more than 150 people lined the pews of this Orange County sanctuary. The first 30 minutes was very uncomfortable for me.
As people shuffled in and took their seats, I felt awkward to greet dozens of people from a past life. “Holy shit, _____ is so old now.” But I realized I stopped going to that church more than 15 years ago. It was difficult to remember many people. I couldn’t help but feel embarrassment on the multiple occasions I didn’t know who folks were.
It felt awkward to respond to small talk. “I’m so glad you’ve moved back to California,” people would say. It felt like coded language for, “I’m so glad you got to see your mother before she died.” But I struggled to hide my deep regret at uprooting myself and maxing out credit cards to trade a city I loved for a city I hated. I told several of them I couldn’t wait to leave California.
And it felt especially awkward to receive more congratulations than condolences. Holding a four-week-old baby is the ultimate conversational ice breaker. I understand these are also well-intentioned, but I wasn’t there to chit chat about how many diapers I’d been changing. (Yes, a very old person asked me if I had changed a diaper yet, like, bro, this isn’t the 1950s).
The service began. Allison, Robin, and I were in the front row, reserved for family.
The most traditional and Lutheran-iest part of the service was the very first minutes. The mourners all read together from a dusty old book saying something, something, “hear us, O Lord,” something, something. I was having a hard time buying in.
My mother’s best friend who lived across the street from my childhood home spoke. Then another of my mother's friends from our childhood church. So did my mother's cousin. They spoke candidly and vulnerably about the characteristics of my mother they loved the most: her kindness, her thoughtfulness, her relationship with God. These eulogies were beautiful and heart-felt, but still, I had a hard time buying in.
Pastor Eddie then got up and spoke fondly about my mother and reiterated to the many people there that this is not the end of Kay, but the beginning. She hurts no longer, and runs into the arms of her Father in Heaven. This is certainly a comfort to many of the people there that day, as well as many of you reading here today. But still, I was having a hard time buying in.
Was I supposed to feel… something? Was I supposed to feel grief? Comfort from that grief? Emotional closure? Was I supposed to suddenly believe in a faith system and afterlife that I had spent 15 years denouncing?
Pastor spoke for 20 minutes (maybe shorter, maybe longer. I was holding a 4-week-old baby like a time bomb. Time was an illusion). A band whose members were my mother’s close friends played some contemporary worship songs she loved.
And the service closed with a long slideshow. But the 100-ish photos selected were shown to the funeral attendants in a mostly-chronological order. They told a loving and thoughtful story of my mother’s life, starting in a trailer on farmland in North Carolina to the suburbs of Orange County, California.
I had seen most of these photos before. But maybe that “something” I thought I needed to feel started to creep in when I saw two photos in particular.
The first was a picture of my mother holding my youngest cousin. He was probably 2 at the time of the photo, and my mother was nearly perfectly healthy at the time. That same cousin, now in 1st grade, was sitting in the row behind me. He had no recollection of that moment or of the woman who was his Aunt.
I was so instantly filled with sadness when I saw this photo; more grief than I had yet felt since she died. My mother would never meet her only grandson. We hadn’t even been discharged from the hospital when she, in her late-stage ALS, had a positive COVID test. We wanted to quarantine, and hope against all hope, that she’d get better. But within a week, she had died. She never got to be in the same room as him. Never got to touch his cheek, or whisper that she loved him.
The permanence of death hit me for the first time at that moment.
More pictures went by until I was reminded of an old friend, a woman we’ll call Mary. She was a few years older than me, and the only older sister figure I’ve ever had in my life. She and my mom were close enough in age though to call each other friends, also. But Mary died five years ago, in her early-30s, after a short battle against a swift-moving cancer.
My initial reaction was one of such deep anger and grief. How could I not be upset? I was in this building dedicated to the idea of a divine energy that could create universes at whim. And yet these two women that I loved, who believed in that energy whole-heartedly and dedicated so much of their lives to that idea’s proliferation could die an unpreventable death? Their deaths could not be prevented by the same energy that creates universes?
How could this be?
(And maybe someday I’ll write more about my faith philosophy. But for today, these questions go unanswered).
March 2023
This “After” section was written in March 2023. I didn’t edit or even reread “Before” or “During” until now.
If truth be told, I cringed rereading the “Before” and “During.” But maybe that’s the reality of writing about your deepest feelings in the moment. Damn, I was angry that week. I don’t recall being so angry that week. I recalled it as sadness. (If I was that outwardly angry, don’t confirm this for me lol).
I’m happy to report that six months later, I feel less sad and angry.
I can’t pinpoint a particular event or moment that’s made me feel better. Something, something, time heals all wounds, something, something.
Church spaces don’t make most people feel sad/angry/anxious. They’re a necessary space for refuge, healing, and peace for literally billions of people. But for years, being in churches has had a deleterious effect on me. Thus, I’ve spent a lot of energy avoiding these spaces. I haven’t been in a church sanctuary since my mother’s funeral.
(I want to note that having a secular worldview that denounces tenants of organized religion does not exclude me from believing that parts of my mother are still around, influencing my world in tangible ways. Is it her spirit or a soul? Her ghost? A coincidence?
I don’t know, but “Carolina in My Mind” by James Taylor just came up on shuffle as I wrote this section. I’m sobbing, missing my mom, as an algorithm pushed a song that makes me think of my mother and her Carolina roots.)
And, for better and for worse, I don’t think about my mother everyday anymore. I’m also happy to report that when I do think of her, I don’t think of the agonized and dying woman. That was crushing.
Rather than the shell of her that was left at the end, I think of her strength and resilience. Battling ALS is a Sisyphean task. There is no relief, there is no happy ending, there is no hope. There is no cure. And yet, not a single time did my mother complain outwardly. She always found a reason to smile, even to the very end. And even after the disease had taken her ability to move the muscles in her face, she could increase the twinkle in her eye. I can't explain it or replicate it. And somehow that smile was as bright as any I’ve ever seen of her in any photograph.
I think I’m just crying and rambling now. This one wasn’t an allegory, or a lesson, or an advice on how to grieve. This post was just part of my process. If you stuck around, thanks for reading.
And thanks for letting me Overshare.
Leave a comment, like the post, or share with a friend; they all go a long way in growing the website. If you'd like to contribute to the project, please consider supporting me through Patreon. You can also follow me on socials for updates on Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitch, or through the email list.
Kommentit