Viewing Hours

Apparently traditional funerals are not common these days. Neither of my kids had been to one that they remembered. The last family funeral anyone attended was my maternal Grandmother and that was back in the early 1990's. Both boys found the custom of having an open casket difficult to deal with. Yes, the body in the casket looked somewhat like Grampa, though the ears didn't stick out quite enough, and it lay so still.

The flowers helped, even though Mom had asked us not to send any. Beauty tempers the ugliness of death so best to have a lot of it. My youngest sister also found the open casket eerie. She kept thinking the body moved, a normal phenomenon. Mom said the missing element was Dad's personality, and no matter how good the embalming, you can't portray what is no longer there.

People drifted in and out all evening, from the different aspects of Dad's life and work. Representatives from the Presbytery that he had participated in came, some from a good distance. Mom's brother and his son were there. Members of the church Dad had helped establish came. Pastors, friends, those whose lives had been touched by Dad's ministry.

They gathered around the pictures of Dad's family and of the churches where he had served. He began preaching at a small church in Suffren, NY (where I was born), then moved on to pastor churches in Vermont, Esperance, Westville, Fort Covington and Johnstown before his final church plant, the Redeemer Reformed Presbyterian Church in Queensbury, NY.

He was an educated man, holding various degrees up to his doctorate (abd from Baylor); a deep thinker who once told me he was working on inventing an infinitely variable gear shift for bicycles so bikers could tirelessly pedal without the need to ever shift. He also invented watermelon Jello long before Jello came up with the idea.

It was fascinating to walk down memory lane with each person, recalling things Dad had said or done, how he had intersected with the lives of so many. How curious that things long forgotten or not even registering on Dad's radar screen had completely changed the course of someone's life for the better. One never knows when some small gesture of concern or simple statement of truth will explode in significant life-altering reality.

Of the eight of us children, only six were able to come, and only five of us in time for the viewing hours, my older brother sliding in ten minutes before closing, my boys the only grandchildren near enough to be there. We are flung to the far corners of the country from California to New Hampshire to Colorado, Tennessee and North Carolina and rarely ever get everyone in the same place at the same time.

As the time of consolation came to a close, we each bundled up against the cold of winter and went our separate ways to the various places we are staying, thoughts of Dad on our minds, heartache for Mom who is doing marvelously well. Tomorrow, the burial. Tonight, a resting from our travels and our sorrows.