a burial

last week i went to a burial at a beautiful cemetery on a hill way down in the countryside where i grew up. i'm not used to driving those winding back roads and thought for sure i was lost and would be late, but i made it.

i pulled into the parking lot where groups of unfamiliar people were gathered and wished i wasn't alone. i quickly found my friend molly to give her a big hug. she was the reason i was there. her dad died.

molly (not her real name, because i am funny about using real names here) and i were best buds in elementary school. we rode the bus together, were goofballs, and played at each others houses and at our brothers baseball games.

and when molly's parents started going through a divorce, we started going to banana splits together at school. banana splits was the perk of having divorced parents. everyone wanted to go.

we got out of class for maybe 30 minutes to go to banana splits once a week, and at the end of the school year we got to eat a banana split. because in theory we were "banana splits"- split between two parents.

it was there that i learned i was being jipped of a lot of the perks other kids got in a divorce, because i did not in fact get two houses or two bedrooms, double christmases, or double toys and books. and i got confused at banana splits when they told us things like "it's not your fault." um, of course it wasn't my fault. i went home and asked my mom why any kid would ever think that a divorce had anything to do with them. it made no sense to me.

while i may have wished for the material amenities other kids got out of their parents divorces, even at that young age i think i knew that none of those things really mattered. i had been spared from an awful lot in the realm of divorce, and that became even clearer when molly's parents first separated.

i couldn't believe the things that her mom was saying and doing. molly cried a lot. i was scared for her and wanted to help but i did not know how. she even cried in class and our teacher would let her hide under a table until she stopped. sometimes she'd be in the bathroom forever and our teacher would send me to check on her, and she'd be in there crying.

our play dates had temporarily been only at my house while things were really messy, but eventually her dad built a new house and we started having play dates there too.

he was a great dad. like, really great. he took care of molly and her brothers and you could tell he adored them and that the feeling was mutual from all three of his kids. at her birthday party he planned food and games and prizes all by himself - for a bunch of squealing fourth grade girls. in the summer he let each of his kids take a friend along to the beach. he took lots of pictures and gave us money for the boardwalk and took us out for pizza.

once molly and i got lost in the woods at her house with her little brother and were gone for hours. her little brother cried while we devised plans on how to stay alive in the wilderness where we were sure we'd be stuck forever. (clearly neither molly or i were very dramatic.) we finally heard her dad yelling for us as he barreled through the woods on his four-wheeler. we yelled back to him and somehow we managed to run through the briar bushes that moments before had seemed impossible to ever make our way back out of. he hugged us and rescued us on the four-wheeler.

when i found out molly's dad was dead i cried, even though it had been years since i had hung out with her or seen her dad. i wondered for the umpteenth time why life is unfair.

i wanted to make a deal with God. even though i know it doesn't work like that, and i know life is hard and death is a part of it, i still had to ask. why him God? i would have given you my dad so that her dad could live. my dad had just called me to tell me that i'm worthless again - why couldn't he die instead of molly's dad?

and why do some people - like molly - have to go through so many hard things? why couldn't this happen to one of my friends who seem to never go through anything really difficult, all the while with a total lack of gratitude for how blessed they are?

when her older brother spoke at the burial it was all i could do to keep myself from completely bawling as tears fell down my face. he used the perfect mix of humor and sentimentality without being sappy. he said that whenever he would cry growing up, his dad would cry with him and then he would say, "i hate that you have to go through this, but you know what buddy? the sun's going to come up again tomorrow, and we've got to get up with it."

i love that his dad would cry with him. part of the reason i love it so much is that he was a big, handsome, man's man who loved hunting and fishing and the outdoors. he truly was all man - because he was not only strong physically but strong emotionally, and modeled healthy emotions to his children.

after the burial i stopped at one of my favorite spots by the river. the sunset was perfect. i hobbled past some fishermen in my heels and dress to sit on a rock above the river, and then a dad with two little kids walked by. and i know there's been a lot of crying in this post already, but i started to cry.

i cried for molly and her family, and for everyone who knew molly's dad and will feel his absence every day. and i cried for myself and i even cried thinking about the two little kids at the river with their dad who i didn't even know.

in the midst of crying i remembered that i had bawled my eyes out in that very same spot more than a year ago after church.

someone at church had given me a word that i more or less blew off as a probably made up word that could have fit anyone's life - even though i started crying as soon as i got to my car. it sparked me to cry so much that when i got home, even after a stop at the river spot to regroup, my mom asked if i was hung over. (i envy the pretty criers of the world, i really do.)

but on that particular monday night things started to click as i remembered that forgotten word and realized how right on it was, and how much God had been doing in my life in the past year.

it's funny how you barely see it in the day to day, and then all of a sudden you accidentally turn around and see it - the growing up and the learning and everything God has done.

"peace like a river is surrounding me

when my whole world is a raging sea

only your light is what my soul has found

lost on the ocean."

[matt brouwer]

"peace like a river ran through the city

long past the midnight curfew

we sat starry-eyed

we were satisfied."

[paul simon]