Mamer's Lesson

I went to my Grandma's funeral this past weekend. This is my Mom's mom...a great woman, the second-oldest of seven (all six of the rest were boys), who emerges in some of my best childhood memories alongside my Grandpa, now nearly 30 years deceased himself. "Mamer," as we called her (though I don't know that any of us really know why) actually died before Christmas but we laid her ashes to rest this spring in the family lot beside her husband, Tom, my namesake.

We held a brief and informal ceremony for her in the chapel at the resthome of her only surviving sibling, my Great Uncle Randy, before heading out to the cemetary. It was a small service but afforded my mom and her sisters each a chance to remember their Mom to us all.

The three eldest sisters, my Mom included, each focused on the lessons they learned from their mom - a normal topic for such an occasion, of course. They spoke of the expectations she set for them and of the difficulties they sometimes had living up to her standards, though all the time crediting that standard for making them into the women they are today.

Her daughters were giving credit to her for requiring them to become something better - a wonderful tribute...yet somehow this very idea was entirely disconnected, if by nothing else but time, from my personal experience of my Grandma.

Circumstances intruded on my participation of the service at this point. One of my sons was losing interest, demanding my attention, and I was only able to half-listen to the youngest sister share her thoughts. There is about an 11 year difference between the oldest and the youngest in my Mom's family, so my Aunt Cathy had an understandably different recollection of her mom. From what little attention I could spare for her talk, I culled one clear idea:

She remembered her Mother as a friend.

As cool as this was to hear it still somehow missed the mark for me. Though slightly. I remember Mamer as a playmate and hug, as a lap and a bedtime story, as a destination for adventure somehow different from a normal weekend. Yet none of that is quite right either.

Now I don't know about other folks, but I have a hard time attending a funeral without at some point hearing this phrase play out in my head: "we don't mourn as those who have no hope." That's actually my memory's paraphrase of a passage in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 - something I wouldn't normally be able to reference very handily, but I took the time to look it up this week. I never before realized that this passage of hope comes at the tail end of a fairly long list of what I traditionally think of as, "thou shalt not's." Basically, Paul spends the first 12 verses of this chapter seeking to give us clear directions on "Living to Please God" (or so the NIV labels it).

I think it is incredibly easy to read Paul's words as a list of obligations...an outline of ideals that we should each try to attain, to maintain, yet which we could all agree we're likely to fall short of in one way or another...eventually. But one thing is clear:

Paul is describing a standard.

Sitting in Mamer's funeral, listening to my Mom and her sisters speak, I had a hard time connecting with their remembrance because my experience of my Grandma is so fully encompassed in my memory of the times we came together as an extended family - truly some of the purest joys of my youth. My memory is of four sisters and their Mom telling story after story - interrupting and correcting one another - enjoying their shared history and laughing through it all. My memory is of excited (though long) journeys and anticipated arrivals...and of tearful goodbyes. My memory is of the depth of love and relationship that these women, and me by extension, enjoyed whenever they were together.

The four sister's memory at this time of loss is of the standard their mother set; a standard they all held in common. And of the memory of a friendship lost.

My memory is of the relationship shared and enjoyed between us all.

You know, even on my best days I so readily lose sight of God's promise in my life. His promise of freedom in Him and the idea that He really does have my best interest at heart. I lose sight of it because I all too easily focus on the standard that I continually fall short of...as if the standard was the prize. But its not. Its the springboard to joy. It is imperfectly lived out in my life. It might be perceived by many as rigid or crumbling or ill-stacked...certainly ill-fitting...but for me it is buoyant and even joyous when I recognize it only as a stage that enables my relationship with God to play out. Imperfect though it may be.

The standard, the lessons, the growth are valuable and important and even critical perhaps. But they are not the relationship. It is the relationship I covet. It is the relationship with God that I will never mourn because I do not live as those without hope.

In the midst of our shared loss, it is the relationship that lives on between my mom and her sisters that continues to celebrate the life of the woman we lost. Thanks Mamer.