Geese soar, funerals too often don’t

They offered an extraordinarily splendid sight, three snow geese flying low over my car as I traveled to a nearby town to attend a funeral. Theirs is a whiteness like I have never seen, the late-morning sun shimmering off the wings and underbellies. To see them was to be uplifted, carried away on a winter airstream, maybe a temperate thermal, to where all things are good, where all things include love.

So, while I was thrilled to see these birds, I was once again concerned because they should be farther south than here. I don’t know if it’s climate change, but something is wreaking havoc with the diurnal clocks of our wildlife.

I mentioned a funeral. Last week I was in attendance at two funerals, one Lutheran and one Catholic, and they couldn’t have been more different. One was centered on the deceased while the other was more concerned with Jesus and God. It was fascinating to observe, and it caused me to ponder the ways in which we describe people.

The first funeral was on a sunlit frigid morning where I joined dozens of others in a comfortable, old-fashioned church. We listened to a minister offer up a biography of the person lying in a casket at the front. This is fairly typical and always reminds me, annoyingly, of a PowerPoint presentation, wherein you can simply look down at the ‘order of service’ handed out at the door and follow along with the minister.

As the minister worked his way through his reading, somewhere in the depths of the building, or in someone’s pocket, a phone rang, with the old ring tone, like maybe it was a Princess phone. It was clear no one was picking up, so I hoped it wasn’t God calling, but I suppose by now he’s used to being ignored.

The minister did a nice job but there is a sameness to obituaries and funeral biographies. It’s a style that has not changed in decades and doesn’t really do justice to the loved, sentient human who is no longer with us, except in sweet memory.

Here's one I see and hear often: The deceased was a Hawkeye fan. Uh, OK. We can do better. How about he loved nothing more than parking in downtown Iowa City on game day so that he could make the long, slow walk past the stately Old Capital, crossing the river as the crowds on the sidewalk got larger and larger. And he enjoyed the fully delicious smell of grilled beef and pork coming from the parking lot by the stadium, and the slight aroma of autumn leaves, newly scattered on the sidewalk and later, in his seat in the stadium, he was content, all alone with 60,000 of his best friends and, for a few hours, demons were no longer at his door. Heaven.

Another common mention in funeral service biographies, for women in particular: The deceased was a great cook. What does that mean? Feeding others is a spiritual undertaking, a way to fully connect with others. How about we find out that when she was cooking, the agreeable aroma of the heated food wafted throughout the house, offering up warmth, comfort, and goodwill and when loving family members inhaled the smells of her fine cooking it caused them to think of those who had gone before, some many years ago, parents, grandparents, and maybe somewhere in there was a sprinkling of Christmas. Her cooking was about love.

That’s what I want to hear.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book “The Iowa State Fair” is available from the University of Iowa Press.