A Funeral Homily on the 5th Anniversary of A Suicide
Five years ago a friend committed suicide. I wasn’t the closest circle of impact, so for a long time I thought perhaps there was not space for my grief as well. I wanted to make sure we had centered the people most directly impacted.
But over the last five years I’ve come to recognize that in doing so I also did my own heart a disservice. So, while in seminary, I wrote this homily. It is what I wished I could have said, had I been a person who spoke at her funeral. It was an attempt to sketch out the space I thought one could hope to hold when addressing such a broad group of people as those who gathered, both in person and online, in a space many were uncomfortable with and mistrustful of.
This is belated. It is not enough. And it doesn’t change the things we’ve lost. But it is also my testimony and a bearing of witness. And for those reasons, I share it here.
When I head the news of Bryn’s passing, my first reaction was “God fucking damnit.” In some ways that still feels like the most honest response.
The news crashed over us like a tidal wave, leaving devastation in its wake. Even as some of us sprung into action, others were paralyzed. The shock and disbelief are tangible. For some of us, the overwhelming feeling is numbness – an oddly clinical detachment and a hyper-focused engagement with the details, because knowing everything feels safer, maybe saner, or maybe just helps us feel at all. For others, it’s rage and a sense of powerlessness and betrayal. How could she do this to us? What could we have done differently? Could this have been prevented? And for some of us, this new loss brings back to the surface other deaths that we were still laying to rest.
Grief takes many forms, and as we gather here together this evening I want to affirm to you the holiness of your grief. Bryn was deeply loved, and she had a profound impact on so many of us – of course she is deeply mourned as well.
Bryn was not always easy, but she was hard to resist. She could be soft and introspective, and then turn on a dime and cut into you with a razor-sharp wit. She loved and fought with women in equal measure, and she played boys like autoharps, deftly plucking out the melody she wanted with a skill that made them hum along, thinking it was their own tune. Will anyone ever again wear sundresses and cowboy boots so well?
She was witchy and mercurial; I never wanted to cross her. No matter how close I thought we were or might have been, that just seemed like certain destruction. And she was unapologetic - at least in my experience - about her choices and her feelings. She didn't shy away from the things that had made her who she was, and she didn't back down once she'd decided to scrap with you. Hell, sometimes she initiated it.
But she also cared deeply about people. She loved hard and fiercely.
And so it is perhaps appropriate that the last thing Bryn said to us was, “Be kind to each other.”
Now I confess that, because I’m a theology nerd, when I saw those words I wondered immediately if they were scripture. Bryn was a Christian – she and I talked a lot about faith – the faith we grew up with and the ones we’d found or fashioned or reclaimed for ourselves.
But I know that’s not reality for a lot of people in this room. For a lot of us, church has been primarily associated with violence and pain. Being in one now as we grieve Bryn’s loss doesn’t do much to change that perception.
Still, I am reminded of the words of that rhinestone femme prophet, Dolly Parton: “People just overshoot trying to find God. They're going outside and trying everything. They don't realize that it's right inside themselves.”[1]
Whether or not you are a person who resonated with God as Bryn named her, I believe that the in the act of all of us being here today, we bring a radiant, collective queer divinity to witness to Bryn’s life and death. And that communal divinity is big enough to hold all of our grief, rage, numbness, and despair.
For some of us, that will feel like church. For others, it will mean something else entirely. And that’s okay, because faith or no faith, we’re here because of Bryn, and because we believe there’s something about that togetherness that is more powerful than our isolation.
So I looked it up – that phrase – and it turns out it’s from the book of Ephesians, which is in the Christian New Testament.
I can’t say for sure that she meant to quote scripture in her final words to us, but reading them in that context I have to say the whole thing is very Bryn – in one way dark and funny, and in another, the kindest and most compassionate thing to leave us with.
Because you see, Ephesians 4:29-32 goes like this:
Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up the one in need and bringing grace to those who listen.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, outcry and slander, along with every form of malice.
Be kind and tender-hearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.
It’s not exactly what I was expecting. And also, it’s perfect.
Bryn, the saltiest, shadiest, wryest and most wonderfully acerbic of high femmes, quoting scripture that speaks directly against those qualities.
And at the same time giving us another kind of way to be with each other, even and especially in grief.
To be kind to one another - standing alongside each other and holding each other even as we reel in the wake of her death.
To be kind to each other – leaving space for grace, and the many ways people grieve, and also reminding each other that we will never fully understand why this happened or be able to logic it away.
To be kind to each other – forgiving ourselves and others for our shortness and our shortcomings in the days to come. Her death is not anyone’s fault, except perhaps, as Sarah said, the fault of a State that failed her.
Bryn’s words are a rejection of the very isolation she struggled with, and the demons that she grappled with, and ultimately lost to. Her words urge us to turn us towards each other, even if she couldn’t in those final moments.
She wouldn’t have given us these words if she didn’t know they’d be hard, but also that they could save us. Like all of Bryn’s best works, they have that perfect balance of sharp-edged truth and artful fiction, just to make it go down easier.
We could read her words as a fiction, an impossibility, a platitude. But we could also take them seriously. Pick them up and live them as a mantra. Build the kind of home, peace, and rest we know she always wanted for herself and for all of us.
Bryn rests now in power, and we, the living, are left to treasure all the pieces of glitter she left lodged in our souls. May we shine more brightly for each other because she has been a part of us.
[1] “16 Quotes by Dolly on Faith and Family.” Southern Living, www.southernliving.com/culture/celebrities/dolly-parton-quotes-religious?slide=299010#299010.
