I made a remark recently about funerals being sore spot with me on the thread FUNERALS. This is in response to Sunspot’s request for my experience with funerals. It would probably take less time for me to just write it again than to look it up…LOL!
Sister A was the first person in this area to begin studying. She raised a family of four girls and two boys, all of whom became witnesses. They were poor people who had to struggle just to stay alive. She was married at twelve years old and lost a son of that age to tetanus. Things were very hard in those days. A doctor was someone you went to when you were dying. The ‘truth’ appealed to her because, like so many of us, it gave us a hope we would otherwise not have. My mother began studying and they became friends. As poor as Sister A was, we were poorer and she had to pick us up and bring us to the hall that was about twenty miles away. I’ve known this lady all of my life.
In time, two of the daughters and both sons got df’d. The older of the sons stopped smoking and was eventually re-instatated. Although he was a big, burly man, he had a bad heart and the doctors told her that he did not have long to live. This saddened the old lady considerably as you can well imagine. She would be soon losing another one of her sons. Meanwhile, her oldest daughter’s husband developed serious respiratory problems as a result of having worked around chemical plants and he was told that he was not long for this world. Sick as he was, however, he gave her trouble to no end for the few times her df’d daughters and son would stop by to check on her and visit for a while. This was taking a toll on the old lady as well.
In time the son-in-law died and although he had caused her great grief over her children’s visits, he was her daughter’s husband and she was greatly saddened over his death. A few months after that she gets a phone call that one of her next to youngest daughter just dropped dead of a heart attack. The old lady was plunged into more despair. This daughter was disfellowshipped and she knew that the funeral would be a problem and that most of her lifelong ‘friends’ would not even come.
A few months after that she is told that the doctors have done all they can for her oldest son and that he is dying. I was still an elder in the congregation at the time and she asked me to do the funeral. I agreed, naturally. This lady has always been a happy person even though her health has been failing her these last few years but now it was very difficult to see her with a smile. She had lost a son-in-law and a second child and now a third child was soon to die. About week after having been told that her oldest son has only a matter of days left to live she gets a phone call that her youngest son has just been killed in a traffic accident in another state.
I went over to her house after her and her daughters came back from attending to the arrangements for having the body brought back home. I’ve never seen anyone more distraught as she sat there, exhausted from crying. I hugged her and stayed with her until she finally went to bed to rest. She asked me to do the funeral and I told her I would although I expected some resistance to my doing this since the man was df’d.
Just a few months before that, an elder in a nearby congregation had done the funeral for his disfellowshipped step-son who had died of a drug overdose and no one had said a thing about it. I knew the family and I attended the funeral as well.
I expected some token objections and that’s all. I was wrong. Word spread like wildfire and by the time I got home one of the elders was on the phone telling me that I should not do the funeral. I called the C.O. and explained the situation to him. He told me that I was not to do the funeral and that I should ‘explain’ to the family why it was the loving thing to do.
I had to go back to the family and tell them that the Circuit Overseer would not allow it. I didn’t try to make any excuses because I was angry as hell over the whole matter. I simply told them: “They won’t let me do it.” They accepted it as though God himself had decreed it. The family got a minister from ‘Babylon the Great’ (a woman at that! Sorry, girls ) to do the funeral. Some of the witnesses (about half of our congregation did not even show up) asked me why this woman preacher was doing the funeral and I replied that the Society would not allow me to do it. Again, the response was simply, “Oh.” And they walked off.
The old sister has a lot of family who are not witnesses and the funeral home was packed with these people. They, however, were not as understanding as the witnesses. A lot of them were asking how come her preacher wasn’t doing the funeral for her son. The witnesses did not get a very good witness that day. What little respect any may have had for us was soon lost by that episode. I went up to the preacher after the funeral and thanked her for what she did. I don’t think any of the other witnesses did, however.
My wife had cooked a huge lunch for those who wanted to visit Sister A after the funeral. There were just a few people there, however. Some of the relatives went over to her younger daughter’s house because the younger daughter, being df’d, was not allowed to stay and comfort her mother. The few witnesses that did come would have been offended by her presence. It was a pitiful sight inasmuch as some of the relatives would go from one house to another in order to attened to the younger daughter as well as the two other daughters and the mother.
The old woman was exhausted. One of her grandaughters is a nurse and she gave her a mild sedative. It wa obvious that the lady would soon collapse anyway. They led her off to bed and just as they closed the door, the phone rang. The oldest son had just died. Sister A hobbled back into the living room crying again. She looked at me and asked me just how much a person was supposed to be able to take. I had no answer.
I did the funeral for this son because he was in good standing at the time. That only confused the worldly relatives even more, that I would do the funeral for one of her sons but not for the other. The whole thing made me sick. It was the last straw for me. I had seen what the organization thought of its members and how it valued what it percieves to be its image in the community to be more important than an old lady who’s world was falling apart. It was then I decided that I had had enough.