This blog photo made lovingly with PicMonkey

 
Yesterday I attended a funeral for a friend’s father. His passing was a sudden one for the family, and the air in the funeral home when I walked in was dark and somber. Alternatively, the actual funeral home itself was beautiful inside. The ceiling had lights that changed colors, and lit up like a starlit sky.

Going in, I steeled myself against the emotional riptide threatening to envelop me, because a funeral for a father hit too close to home. The funeral flyers, the flowers, the family portraits. It was all too easy to fall apart. But I told myself in the most loving way possible, that this wasn’t my father’s funeral, and to remain focused on celebrating the memory of the father my good friend had just lost.

I’m writing about this today because the eulogy given by the preacher at this service was life altering for me. I wish I could have recorded it. It began after the video tribute, when the entire audience was mostly in tears. The preacher stepped up to the podium to give the eulogy, and I thought to myself, this is probably going to be the saddest part.

But in fact, it was anything but sad. Preachers, priests, pastors…they all have this way of making you feel comforted, or me at least. I can’t explain it. I was raised Catholic, and grew to be more spiritual as time went on because organized religion sometimes trips me out, but there’s still something about sermons and gospels that comforts me to my core, and that’s why this eulogy shook me in the most beautiful way.

The preacher started by talking a bit about who my friend’s father was, and how he knew a lot of famous people, having worked in the radio industry for years. He talked about knowing him when he was younger, and watching him raise his kids. But then he started talking about God, Jesus, and the bible. Now it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in any of those things, because it was the way this preacher tied all of it together that moved me so much.

I’ll just go ahead and unfold the eulogy to you in a sort of stream of consciousness way, as that is how it unfolded for me.

He talked about how dying on the 7th was important, (his father died on May 7th), because the number 7 in the bible signifies completion (God rested on the 7th day). So his death signified a life completed. He talked about how when our children are born, we should weep, because as children of God, they are going to suffer, and no matter how much we wish we could, we can’t suffer for them. Whether or not you believe yourself to be a child of God doesn’t matter, suffering is inevitable. There’s truth in it, and beauty.

The preacher talked about how peace is past understanding. This opened up my eyes because I am always, it seems, looking for peace. I am always trying to find it within myself and my soul, in whatever situation I am in. I try to understand it. I try to unpackage it and wrap my head around it. I try to solve it until I’m blue in the face. But knowing this one thing, that peace is past understanding, instilled a peace in me like never before. I was able to surrender all I’ve ever thought about trying to understand life and peace. I was able to just sit there and surrender to not knowing how things are supposed to be, surrendering to the mystery of life itself.

He also talked about how our life here on earth as humans is short. We get 80-90 or so years to live and that’s it, and that it’s not long enough. For us to die after only 80-90 years cannot mean the end. It’s just too short. That our souls live on, that they’re eternal. We came from dust, and we’ll return to dust, but our souls will go on forever. That may sound cliche, and like something you’ve heard hundreds of times before, but something in the way the preacher said it made me feel wonderful. I have never felt more unafraid of death than in that moment. No matter what your denomination, I know deep in my heart that he’s right–this can’t be it. This can’t be the end. We are too beautiful, too miraculous to exist for this short span of time and blip out of existence.

Lastly, he said that we are so incredibly loved, and that we are never, ever alone.

I wish I could tell you everything else that was said. I wish I could write a blog post about each and every single sentence. But I can only describe to you what I felt leaving that service. I felt so incredibly whole. I felt like I was loved and have been loved for a long time. I felt like all the struggles I’ve had over the past few weeks, with regard to this new, longer commute back and forth to work, and the new routine, would go from being struggles I was facing alone, to struggles I could now face with a spiritual companion, be that God, Jesus, angels, or some other spiritual force in the universe. I felt so incredibly not alone. I felt accompanied. And when you feel like someone is with you all of the time, loving you and believing in you, it’s easier to not be afraid.

Have you ever experienced this kind of feeling before? Or been to a service of some sort that really moved you? It’s strange how things like funerals are supposed to be so incredibly sad, but how you can wind up walking away from them with anything but a heavy heart.

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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