Death and respect

Having to grieve for your lost loved ones apparently isn’t bad enough

I went to a funeral today for my Uncle Stacey. I was very close with him, and so I had a lot of things I wanted to say. I said them, and it felt good to say them. Cathartic. I poured my heart into my eulogy, and I firmly believe every word I said.

During my eulogy, I made the point that nobody ever escapes death, and that because of this fact, we need to live our lives as if each day were our last, because some day it will be. But afterwards, Allan Pierce — the pastor officiating the funeral — went out of his way to ‘add’ to that by saying “but let’s not forget that Jesus came back from the dead.” I was livid. I wanted to stand up and call him out on that, and tell him why he was wrong and why it had nothing to do with what I said. I wanted to tell him that what he said was entirely disrespectful to me, and thus to my uncle. But I at least had the decency to know that it was an inappropriate time and place to debate theology or have any other sort of argument. Instead, I silently stewed in anger at the fact that he had completely trivialised and belittled one of the main points of my eulogy, which I had spent a week writing and placed a tremendous amount of importance in.

Even if I shared the delusion that Jesus had come back from the dead (which I don’t) his response had absolutely nothing to do with what I was trying to say. Let’s assume for a moment that Jesus did die and come back and rise up to the Happy Land in the Sky afterwards. What does that have to do with the inevitability of our own death? How does that teach us to value the preciousness and uniqueness of life? Even for the religious, Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t change the fact that nobody wants to die. Even if you believe that you’re going to heaven, you know deep down that you don’t want to die to get there. If people did want to die to get there, then you’d see people rejoicing on their deathbeds left and right. “Awesome! I finally get to die!”

But you don’t see that. If you do happen to hear an acknowledgement along the lines of “don’t grieve for me, I’ll be in heaven soon,” it’s certainly never said with any amount of enthusiasm. Death is the one event common to every living thing. Not everyone can be guaranteed to be born, but everyone can be guaranteed to die. That’s important, and we need to treat that with the respect that it deserves. By responding with “but Jesus rose from the dead,” he added a connotation to what I said that was completely inappropriate, and made my words no longer my own. Words which I put a lot of thought and heart into.

I’ve read the bible, and I know how to say what I mean with eloquence. If I wanted to make the point and tie Jesus’ mythical resurrection into it, I would have. If you believe that Jesus was the son of God, then you believe that Jesus was not just a man. At that point, you have to acknowledge that the story of him coming back to life bears no impact on the fact that the rest of us, who are not divine, do not have that ability. It wouldn’t have been a difficult point to make, and I sure as hell would have done a better job of it than the pastor, who clumsily tripped over the sand castle I had so delicately crafted.

Pastor, you took the heartfelt words I said and destroyed them. You tried to take advantage of my family’s genuine grief by suppressing those words in favour of your own poorly-crafted “message.” How noble. You explicitly stated that you wanted to remind people what the Church was about in the hopes that you would swell your congregation. Well, you definitely did remind me what the Church was about, but the result is that you’ve only strengthened my resolve to never be a part of it. You reminded me that the dogma of the Church is one that is based on non-thinking, because if you actually thought about it, you would have made an effective point instead of dismissing what I had to say in lieu of your own convictions. You reminded me that the Church doesn’t respect the individual, because if you did, you would have left my words — my personal thoughts — alone. You made some good points during your speech; points with which I agreed and by which I was genuinely moved. But you just didn’t know to leave “well enough” alone, and as a result you trampled all over everything I had said.

I opened my eulogy with a quote from Star Trek II, but it was a very important point I was trying to make. “How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.” I firmly believe those words. Our mortality demands respect for death, and when you have the audacity to use that instead to advance your own selfish aspirations, you show that you have no respect for death or life.

The fact that I don’t share your beliefs does not give you the right to impose them upon me; especially in my time of grieving. I understand that I had to deal with some amount of religiousness: I was in a church. I understand that being an atheist in a stronghold of theism means that you have to expect to hear a lot of things you don’t agree with. But not believing in God did not make ‘Amazing Grace’ any less beautiful of a song. It didn’t make the words I quoted from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a pastor in his own life — any less powerful or true. And above all, it did not make me grieve for my beloved uncle any less.

If I can respect your beliefs for the sake of the greater good, then I expect the same in return. That means not twisting my words around for your own ends, or trying to belittle the point I was making about how each life is important. It means respecting that people have put much of themselves into their eulogies, and not attempting to distract people from the very important things that they have to say.

People don’t have two funerals. When you get up there and speak from your heart, you don’t get to “do it over.” That one fact should compel you to let those who have something to say do so without interference. Funerals are for the bereaved, not the officiator. I may forgive you in due time, but I will never forget what you did.