The Worst That Could Happen
By Jared Ruark
I've been meaning to tell you a story about the time I almost ruined a funeral.
The short of it is that as we were leaving the funeral home our motorcade, through what may have been some fault of my own, was interrupted, was separated into two packs by four or five vehicles. I'm at the very front of the second group, trying to keep an eye on the rest of the motorcade, and I have no idea where we are supposed to be going.
The slightly longer and potentially more exonerating of it is that I usually don't drive in a motorcade. So if I made a mistake (I did) then it was a rookie mistake. Most of the time the motorcade isn't my concern because I'm the one officiating, and the officiating minister typically rides passenger side with the funeral director, immediately tailing the hearse.
At a normal funeral, if there is such a thing, I pull into the parking lot and the attendant, the guy who arranges the motorcade, says, "You must be a grandson."
"No, the minister." I make this sort of correction a lot. I don't wear a collar and my face is still fairly baby-like. Babies, of course, cannot be ordained clergy.
The attendant and I clarify my role. He asks if I'll ride with the funeral director and I say yes. It's easy that way and I don't have to worry about getting half of a motorcade stranded.
On the day I almost ruined a funeral they parked me in the motorcade at the front of a row. Evidently no one told the funeral home that a first-time motorcade participant who might potentially ruin the process of grief for dozens of people was in attendance, because there was no one outside to direct and form the motorcade. The time comes for my row to fall in line but instead of joining my row to the group I sort of just sit there, almost like the driver who can't decide between running a light and stopping so that they end up stopped in the middle of an intersection blocking traffic like an idiot.
So we end up with our split motorcade and I'm leading the later group without any idea of where we're supposed to be headed. And at that point I made the calculated, measured decision to panic a little bit.
I am going to lose sight of the motorcade. We are going to hit a light and get lost and miss the burial and then someone is going to say something to me like, "how were you placed in a motorcade when you don't even look old enough to drive?"
Maybe I stop my car in the middle of the road to ask directions of the car right behind me and the driver says, "I don't know." Then we ask the rest of the drivers in the divided motorcade and none of them know either. So we are hopelessly stranded.
One of my mentors in ministry used to always ask me, "What's the worst that could happen?" Whenever I had uncertainty or anxiety about a pastoral situation we would try to think through the very worst case scenario. I learned from thinking it through that the worst case is typically not so bad, and I learned from experience that my anxious imagination far outstrips my misfortune.
The motorcade is plugging along, we are not yet separated any more than at the outset, and I'm starting to breath easier, kind of.
Then a traffic light turns red at precisely the wrong moment, and soon after I let out a stream of high-volume curses at what felt like precisely the right moment for profanities.I'm thinking that a worst case scenario finally caught up with me. I start to pray. (Sometimes one needs to curse and then pray.)
Well, the light turns a few seconds later, I keep track of the motorcade, and we all make it in time. Yet another ministerial crisis averted on account of luck.
Later in the week I revisit the situation, this time with a more level head, and I realize the situation was not nearly as dire as previously imagined. Even in the very worst case scenario we would've found someway to make it to the graveside. Everyone would say their goodbyes and then eventually, probably sooner rather than later, they'd forget about the motorcade snafu. The worst wouldn't have been so bad.
I realized just the other day the worst thing that could happen at a funeral. Novice as I am in the practice of grief, I am still convinced, I am quite sure that the worst thing at a funeral is to not show up at all. The worst case scenario with a broken motorcade is not the potential of getting lost so much as the thought of never arriving. Never arriving means never mourning, and that would be far and away the worst case.
One thing I know: it is difficult to mourn and yet far more difficult to avoid the work of mourning. The first truth is understood more widely than the second. Not everyone has the good fortune of learning that grief beckons more strongly than it repels.
Already in my work as a pastor I've experienced novel forms of grief, grief that was new to me, previously unimagined by me. And in retrospect I can say with near certainty that I wouldn't have chosen those experiences for myself. I wouldn't have chosen to be overwhelmed and unraveled. Part of me, most of me prefers the type of sadness that comes bound in paperback or delivered via internet stream. Sad art I can handle, or at least escape.
But what I've learned simply from showing up, mostly because it is my job to show up, is that the grief I never would've chosen somehow transforms into the grief I couldn't have missed. As soon as I realized that the most difficult and unexpected grief is the grief that makes us most human, then I knew that the worst thing would be not to show up at all.
Because had I not shown up at all, I'd never have been startled by the volume of a 21-gun salute when heard outdoors, and never haunted by the same rifle's dampened sound when heard through the stonework of a century-old sanctuary.
Had I not shown up at all, I'd never heard the bugler play taps and never would've thought how its serenity is in such stark contrast to the sound of the rifles, whether startling or muffled.
Had I not shown up at all, I'd never have seen the boy who was old enough to hold a full grown grief and yet too young to stifle it. I wouldn't have seen how his grandmother could still pick him easily and how she held him close as he sobbed just as hard as you'd expect from someone who wasn't being consoled.
And I wouldn't see the smiles in the midst of tears like the arrival of an unexpected friend.
And I wouldn't hear all those words that would altogether undo the speaker if it weren't for their siblings holding them up.
And I wouldn't hear the famous words from Ecclesiastes, the third chapter, again and again. A time to love hate laugh cry scatter gather plant and uproot. A time to be born and a time to die--that's the most relevant line, I suppose. A time in any case for everything. It's a good reminder.
But then people are always cutting the reading short before they finish the chapter, before they get to the best part.
When I read Ecclesiastes at a funeral I am always sure to read the third chapter in its entirety because I love the part where the speaker says, "I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good for as long as they live."
I know, too. I know it all the better for showing up and tending to grief. I know it best of all when mourning someday gives way to happiness again.