a funeral

I remembered today something David Whyte said--or was it John O'Donahue?--about funerals, something to this effect:  When the religious bits are being said, when the list of degrees and accomplishments are being read, the eyes of the people present glaze over.  When someone talks about what the person loved and gave her passion to, the people listening are waked up, their attention quickened.

I thought of this today sitting at the funeral of a dear friend.  It was a simple funeral, and it was religious, as she would have liked.  But what stirred me most was a letter read aloud from her beloved and only grandson who is incarcerated and couldn't be there. 

The letter was a few pages long and in it, he told about how he, as a little boy, had watched his Nana typing without looking at the keys.  He told us that he was similarly typing the letter we were hearing, mailed from prison to be read aloud.

"My grandmother was never ashamed of me," he said.  "She called every day for the last six years and told me, 'I may not always like what you do, but I will always love you, no matter what.'"

I was there the day of his sentencing.  I will never forget his grandmother's agony.  The sentence of 20 years seemed extreme to all of us, but was unimaginable to Nana.  "I won't live to see him free!" she said.

But she did drive to the prison to visit him every week until her illness, and she called him every day.  She sent him money and helped him start his online degree.  She sent him books from book stores.  And she called him--every single day for the past six years. 

The last time we had a meal together, she showed me a belt buckle he had made in the prison shop and she told me he was doing really well.  She was proud of him.  

I wish she could have heard the letter we all heard today.  "My Nana was the closest thing to an angel anyone has ever known," he said.