But Grace Said …

By B.J. Funk

On that painful morning, his words cut deep into my heart. I had driven the forty-five- minutes-drive the night before as soon as I got the call. Daddy was now with the Lord, and I went to be with my mother.  Her kind preacher stayed until I got there.  This was my first experience of losing a family member.

Death crept into my daddy’s sickbed at the hospital and graciously ended his seven-year struggle. It had been a long battle, cruel and painful as we all watched our brilliant daddy’s mind reduced to bouts of forgetfulness. Equally painful was knowing his life was now limited to living in a wheelchair and being dependent on others for his personal needs.

We slept. I don’t know how, but we slept. Around 9:30 that next morning, the phone rang. I answered.

“This is the funeral home. We wanted to ask Mrs. Greene if it is okay for us to start embalming Mr. Greene.”

The lights went out inside of me. Silence on my end. The words were the cruelest ever. Embalm him? No! This is MY daddy you’re talking about. Embalm him? Why? I don’t know for sure he is really dead! My mind cannot comprehend it. My heart is broken over it. And now the funeral home man wants permission to embalm my very loving and dear daddy. No! No! No!

My insides broke into a million pieces. No daughter should be asked that question. No wife should either. Somehow, I managed to say “You can,” and hung up the phone. My mother never learned about that cruel phone call. And, I have never figured out why in the world the funeral home needed permission. It was hurtful. It was cruel.

For twenty years I have kept that horrid phone call to myself. Now, however, grace calls out to me to forgive, let go and move on.

Grace said “He didn’t handle it well. Forgive him anyway. He could have used a different approach. Forgive him anyway. He was only thinking about his job and not about your family’s pain. Forgive him anyway.”

And, so tonight I am. I never knew his name, and he will never know my pain over his call. How my stomach doubled in knots, reaching up to my  heart and breaking it and how my whole world shattered over his words.

It’s hard enough to accept death. Then, you have to accept that your loved one is at the funeral home without you. Then….then….you have to face that horrid word “embalm.” That’s the word that puts the exclamation mark on the truth of daddy’s death. That’s what makes the staccato on the reality of losing my daddy.

In the days following daddy’s death and burial, I began to see things a little clearer. Somewhere in between all the farewell plans we had to make, I recognized the role of the funeral home, and this thought entered my mind.

“What a blessing that there is someone who can take care of my daddy and get him ready for burial. I couldn’t. My mother or sister couldn’t. There’s only one place that can do what has to be done for us and that one place is the funeral home.”

I don’t think about that hurtful call anymore. I don’t equate it with painful or cruel anymore. I still think it was insensitive and unnecessary. Why couldn’t they just go ahead and do it?

But grace said…..let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

And so I did.

B.J. Funk is Good News’s long-time devotional columnist and author of It’s a Good Day for Grace, available on Amazon.