Category: Roger Harned – Writing

As I looked about the church, I noticed a former love of my youth and recalled retreat from my initial impression. I looked forward with some hesitation to some later inevitable conversation between us.

I thought of others about whom I had also been quite mistaken: some by positive first impression, others by discovery of time how my negative early pictures of them would be just plain wrong.

As I stared emptily into the high trusses and the stained glass, I recalled: ‘The end of all being is the happiness of man.’

(I think it was from Voltaire or someone like that, from a philosophy class I had nearly failed in college.)

Then I remembered one lover who had said to me, “I’m not happy.” And then it was over.

I also thought of a time when I was confronted with a similar situation by a dear friend saying, “I have no reason to live.”

And I guess that if the reason for man’s existence is happiness, then it could possibly be true. But I had begged my friend at the time to allow me to drive there to talk, and not to do anything rash before I could get there. It would take me almost two hours on dark roads to drive to this place where I had never been.

But reminiscing about these loved ones from days past was not the reason we were here. And I pulled in my attention to the cross at the front of the church.

—
Someone said something about Heaven… then my mind really started wandering.

I looked around the church for some helpful pictures, but thought more of a strange picture from yesterday.

I guess that if you look around at all of the different kinds of churches with their different kinds of cemeteries, you see some oddities of how we think about occasions like this.

Last night was one of those odd sorts of occasions that display the incongruous thinking of some of our customs. This particular place and custom had always been dutifully performed in our family with fear and in trepidation

– the formal visit to the funeral home, for the showing of the body.

(In case you are just joining us: https://talkofjesus.com/grief-a-picture-of-heaven-prologue/)

In days long past I had experienced love at first sight.

The initial picture of my lover and the happy endings of our life had been one of grand ceremony; great recognition and perfection of a bride, processing down that long aisle, adored by her groom and taken away for a new life together in a new and different place; for a life we could live together, ‘happily ever after,’ as the endings of fairy tales tell.

Returning to the stuff of real life, that’s not how it had turned out.

It’s really a great mystery how two souls become joined together as one.

It seems as though those in love begin a new life, where the other becomes part of them. But if one should leave or die, a part of the other remains with them…

I thought of it on that memorable ‘day of the funeral.’

I also thought of ordinary things – daily things like shopping for groceries.

I found myself (of all places) in a little grocery store back home many years ago. We were buying some ordinary things like bread and cheese and milk, when out of nowhere I had asked the grocer (in those days, he was the owner), “Why is the extra sharp cheese, extra expensive?” (I had thought it a clever way to complain of his prices.)

He replied: “Because it costs me more. It takes more time to age than that mild cheese in your basket and the farmer at the dairy charges me more for his time. Anything else I can help you with?”

I was a little embarrassed after this. I sheepishly shook my head, no. Then he smiled and said, “No charge for my time.”

I guess it was on my mind as I sat there, as pleasant distraction away from the ceremony at hand. Besides, just yesterday I had remembered it at the supermarket when I bought extra sharp cheddar cheese for the same price as the mild. ‘I guess it’s the cost of some truck driver’s time,’ I thought, which must be the same for both.

Somehow we always seem to have a wrong picture of what things cost to others.

… To be continued