I bury people

I bury people. 

That isn’t all I do, but it is certainly the most…most what?  Intense, certainly; important, I don’t know; frequent, not at all.  But the fact remains that no matter what else I do, if I am remembered at all it will be because I bury people. 

I am not naïve or egoistic about it, so I can say that it is probable that no one will remember me as anything more than the one who did the burying, more more true, they will remember only whether or not they were consoled by the burial.  That is as it should be, of course, and there is an interesting subtext: we bury people for us, the living survivors, not so much for the ones who are dead.

I have buried two men who were murdered, one by his adolescent client, one by his wife, both friends of mine. I buried another dear friend who taught me how to teach (her lesson? one word: empathy). I have buried students who should never have died before me, husbands and mothers, mostly grandparents, also my own aunts and an uncle…and a brother.  It is inevitable.  It stands to reason.

I also baptize people of course.

I should also say that I marry people, for that is certainly also true, and truth be told, so far, anyway, I marry more than I bury.  Once I walked into St. Hubert’s Club, which was a bar owned by the Parish  (no kidding: this is the Rural Midwest). I went in to tell our tenant to stop showing pornographic movies on our t.v. but as I walked in the door, then a kid of about 27 years old in clerics, I was met by a huge and burly man who had already had too much to drink.  He stood as I entered, pointed at me and bellowed out, and I quote: “I know you.  You married me.”  It was true, of course, syntax aside, I had done his wedding.

But if this man remembers me for long it won’t be because I performed his wedding ceremony, but because I buried his uncle or aunt or grandparent. 

Nor will anyone remember, that I was a teacher for 15 years, that I ministered the mass and preached, that I wrote, coached, lectured, that I had my own feelings, sins, desires, property and its contingent problems, or that I cried.

Unless, of course, I happened to cry at a funeral, they’d remember that maybe.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not bitter or even disappointed.  It is as it should be, I suppose.  The Church baptizes, marries, and buries.  The first event few remember, the second, usually for the reception, not the mass.  But everyone remembers the funeral…except, of course, the dead one, which really puts the whole event in a certain surreal light: the one person for whom this is all supposed to be happening is the only person who could care less about how it goes.

But I’ve already said, haven’t I?, that funerals aren’t for the dead, but rather for the survivors.  I’m tempted to launch into a philosophical observation that we are all survivors until we are dead and thus, the whole enterprise is rather amusingly illogical, but I’ll let my existentialist friends possess that particular court.  I guess I am writing this as a sort of my own existentialist whine.  You should know that it is not a lot of fun to bury people, even other people’s grandparents that I never knew.  But I can tell you this too: it sucks to bury your friends...your family.

But I wouldn't have it any other way.  I couldn't bear to not be the one doing the burying.  Hmmm. 

Goodness.  Page two and I am still not exactly sure what it is that I am trying to tell.