Tribute

I’ve taken many, many funeral services over the years. They are always challenging. They are always a reason for serious thought. They are always a reminder that our days are like grass: the wind blows and they are gone. They are always a reminder that we are only visitors on this earth. Some funerals affect me more than others. Funerals of those I’ve known and loved pull on my heart strings. Funerals of those who have expressed faith while they have lived, are ones that are sorrow tinged with joy, and joy tinged with sorrow. Yesterday it was my mum’s funeral. I hadn’t practised for that one. I didn’t take the service. I didn’t want to be the minister, strutting my stuff. I simply wanted to be her son. If my mum had seen what happened she would have been embarrassed. She would have felt awkward. She wouldn’t have understood the genuine honour in which she was held by those who had witnessed her life. Don’t get me wrong. Mum was not perfect. She had her edges. She was a complicated lady with deep, deep pain and a deep loneliness that she carried from the moment she lost her husband suddenly, unexpectedly and cruelly, at the tender age of 35. But she was also a woman of great faith. She was a woman with outstanding resilience. She was a woman with a generous heart, generous in fact to her own detriment. As a mum, she did what we all do. She did, in the words of a friend who once called me his young friend, she did her incompetent best. People in the road she lived came out to pay the respects as we drove away from her bungalow. They didn’t have to. They chose to. People from the church she attended and served in for 40 years came to the church yesterday. As we drove past, they spontaneously clapped with their hands above their heads. That got me. That really got me. They clapped her faithfulness. They clapped her service. They clapped what she had given to each one of them. She would not have understood that. She could not see that. They could. How true that so often is. Others see what we do not. I realised in those moments, that perhaps I did not see the best of my mum. That’s not a criticism. It’s a fact. Sometimes families don’t see the best of those closest. What was lovely, was to think that others saw the best of her. She was a complicated lady. But then I am a complicated man. And maybe she never saw the best of me. It’s because we’re fallen, flawed human beings. All of us. But mum did her incompetent best. And for that I am in her debt. She followed God in the best way she knew how. Through everything. In everything. For her, God was always enough. And that’s the best thing you can live out in front of anyone. Thanks mum for living your life of faith in front of me. Thank you.