The Great Beyond

At my Dad’s memorial service, his close friend Ed Benton read the homily below as part of his superb eulogy. What caught my ear at the time was the line about slipping into the next room. For some reason, this called to mind all the family parties we have held at my sister’s house over the years. As surely happens at most parties across the globe, at my sister’s house we often find ourselves congregating in two groups: the kitchen tribe and the living room tribe, with people migrating from one tribe to the other and back again over the course of the evening.

When I heard that line about the other room I thought, “Okay, when we’re at a family gathering at Sarah’s house, everybody in the kitchen should imagine Dad is in the living room. And everyone in the living room should imagine Dad is in the kitchen.” Alas, I quickly realized, this ruse would never fly. We would not be able to trick ourselves because although he might be confined by time and space to one room, his exuberant voice and laughter was always in both.

Still, the more times I read this homily the more I like it. Composed in a simple way with a small number of simple words, it carries great power quietly:

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well.

Henry Scott Holland
1847-1918
Canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral

By now your soular guide has pulled you away from your terrestrial life. You are firmly committed to the next step of your new existence, Reunion. Your guide takes you down a long catwalk that soon opens up onto a grand, verdant commons. There on the commons, tens or hundreds of globes of light hover with excitement. They are waiting to greet you. It’s a festival of love and you’re the guest of honor. As you approach, the lightglobes take the form of the human beings they were in their terrestrial lives. There is no anger, there are no recriminations. There is only happiness.

My Dad passed away last week and I can’t imagine who his guide was. Possibly some random guy he met over lunch at Duffy’s thirty years ago. Or a client long-forgotten until his arrival in the afterlife. Maybe it was a plaintiff/defendant/judge in a relatively ancient precedent-setting case that played a significant role in my Dad’s legal career. That would give him a laugh. Or maybe it was Hubert Humphrey. I don’t know. However, I have a pretty good idea how the Reunion phase went.

First, he reunited with the son he and my Mom lost in 1967. Donald Kirk died as a baby but in heaven he appeared to my father as a young man so my Dad could see how he would have looked had he grown up. My Dad also appeared younger, maybe in his thirties–just old enough to maintain the sense of fatherness relative to Donald Kirk. Crying and laughing at the same time, they hugged, one of those good heaven hugs, and then they started throwing a football around. My Dad, with a typically joyful Monte smile on his face, took a break now and then to embrace and share a laugh with his relatives and friends. First his mother and father, then the others.

As Donald Kirk and Monte continued to throw the football around, two others joined in. They were the Hill brothers, Fred and Charley. Fred was my Mom’s father but he died when my Mom was an infant. Fred and my Dad had never met — until that moment. They hugged and then, backing away from each other, my Dad tossed Fred the football. Soon the four of them were playing a game, Donald Kirk and Monte versus Fred and Charley on the greenest, freshest turf imaginable. For their respective teams, Donald Kirk and Charley played quarterback on offense and rusher on defense. That left my Dad and Fred to trade off playing receiver and cornerback against each other. It was the most fun each ever had with the pigskin. As for the final score, only God knows who won.

Nobody Knows
Nobody Knows, Part II