“This doesn’t look like heaven.” That’s what Fiona said as she approached Auntie Anna’s casket at the wake the other day. We had explained to Fiona that Auntie Anna had gone to heaven. Yet, there was Auntie Anna’s body in this strange looking bed surrounded by flowers.

We told Fiona that this wasn’t heaven. That all that she was seeing was Auntie Anna’s body, which Auntie Anna didn’t need anymore. You could see the gears spinning in Fiona’s head as she tried to make sense of it all. She reached out and patted Auntie Anna’s arm. Motionless, Auntie Anna looked like a life-sized doll.

Fiona wanted to go up to the casket to say good-bye several times, and as we were leaving, she spoke to Anna’s daughter Arlene, telling her that it was okay. When Arlene got old and didn’t need her body anymore, she would get to go to heaven and be with Auntie Anna.

When I first met Kim, her mother, Janice, was fighting cancer. She died after I had known Kim for about six weeks. I never got to see Janice, except in how she is reflected in her daughter and granddaughter, and from that I know that Janice was a beautiful and wonderful person.

Within a year, Janice’s mother, Helen, died of a broken heart. Quite literally. She had a mild heart attack, which by all rights she should have easily recovered from, but all she ever spoke about was wanting to be with Janice and she didn’t recover from the heart attack. I remember how Helen’s sister, Auntie Anna wailed, “First, Janice, now Helen.”

And so, Kim and I set off on our Harold and Maude-esque relationship. Over the five years that we’ve known each other we’ve been to around three funerals a year as relatives and friends died from old age, cancer, car accidents.

We’ve been to many different funerals. Traditional Catholic funerals, traditional Episcopalian funerals, funerals for people that had committed suicide that it was hard to find a priest for, ‘new age’ funerals with Native America music, good old fashioned Congregationalist funerals. A veritable Varieties of Religious Experiences as expressed through funeral rites.

I think of the grief that one death brings, and I pause to think of the grief that the tsunami has caused. Each time I look, the death toll grows higher, and each person that died was someone’s mother, daughter, grandmother, or other close friend.

At the wake, which didn’t look like heaven, there were many flower bouquets. Just about everyone was wearing black and looking sad. One young woman, however, was wearing pastels and looking radiant. She seemed somehow out of place. It turns out that she was carrying Auntie Anna’s second great grandchild, due in late February. So, it goes, the circle of life.

After the wake, we reflected on children at wakes, jumping off of kneelers. Kim’s father said that he hoped that his grandchildren would be jumping off of kneelers at his wake. We corrected him in pointing out that it will need to be his great grandchildren.

The funeral was a fairly traditional Catholic funeral. Anna’s granddaughter, Stacey, delivered the eulogy. She spoke about what is was like to have a grandmother as a best friend. She reflected on her grandmother telling her that she was beautiful and special. She talked about feeling a little less beautiful with the passing of her grandmother. We all need people to remind us of our own beauty and the world is a little dimmer with the passing of Auntie Anna. Stacey also spoke about spending New Year’s Eve with her grandmother, and as we left the church, the organ played Auld Lang Syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?

…

We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Anne Goodmaster, Rest in Peace.