Death is darkness, shadows that dance even in sunlight, a wisp of smoke from a suddenly extinguished candle.  It is numbness, denial, pain and anger.  It is only in experiencing death that I lament my lack of a belief in god because then there would be someone to direct my anger upon, someone to blame and disavow forever.

    When a loved one dies we speak only kindly and it’s the goodness we exalt in our memories.
When someone leaves your life and moves away the emotions are the same in a sense.  Often  there is a manifestation for the anger.  It’s the stupid tenure policy of the easy to hate academia cycle. ( I’ve hated it more times than I can count, there’s a fresh notch for Karen)

     But what do you do with the anger and disappointment when it is the person ‘s  personal choice to go?  A friend of mine recently said “people get weird when you leave” well yea da, what do you think? like “What about me”... it’s a time when I feel it’s all about me (Sorry Kris).

    We could do a pre-bonding interview,   “you (or your partner) are at PSU completing your doctorate,”  nice to meet you, enjoy the coffee, bye  or “ you are working towards tenure”, great we’ll get together when you get it OK, yea we’ll do some great bonding then.

    Of course  there’s the sneaky ones who you expect will be here forever and then their husband has some stupid midlife crisis and accepts some dream job in another state (that one’s for Diane Saunders, I still don’t have much to say to Jim).  There’s the Lisa Roses, Kris Eyssels, and Ian Riddells who tell you up front, thinking it’ll take away the shock value and they’ll never have to deal with the anger, but they are wrong;   I’m just mad at them all the time, the more I like them the more mad I am at them.

    Yet with everyone who leaves just a single layer under the anger and disappointment is the joy and the richness they’ve added to our  lives, and the question then becomes how to mitigate the anger when they have given so much of themselves.

    These musings and realizations  became ever so clear to me once again since I heard second hand a few weeks ago about Dorothy’s announcement that Alistair was retiring and they were moving to British Columbia. It wasn’t until I saw her at my son’s next lesson and she refused to deny it that I had the emotional breakdown.  Before that I woke from subconsciously fabricated dreams where her leaving was a possibility but not definite, where it was far in the distant future.  I created arguments in my head as to why she wouldn’t,  couldn’t , shouldn’t go away.

    Dorothy causes shadows of memory to play in my mind.    I see the 7 year old girl I was who lived in a house where books and music did not.  I remember  the most magical beautiful Music textbook distributed to the second grade. My fingers remember delicately paging, my heart remembers the awe  and my spirit the impatience to know the secret language of the pages. I lived for the afternoons of music class that always ended too soon as the books were shelved for the week. I remember the unadulterated longing and yearning to own that book.

    At the same time my step-father was pressuring my mother  to transfer me to the Catholic school. He lined up his arguments and the carrot he dangled was the promise that in Catholic school they’d buy my books and I’d get to keep them.  Alas there was no music text and music class was rehearsing from the hymnal for weekly mass,  we didn’t even get to buy the dismal hymnals.
At twelve my family bought a piano but being the oldest of 6, there was only money for lessons for the younger few.  Music was a means of prodigy making, my parents knew not its intrinsic worth.  Music continued to be a sort of mystical magic that touched my soul but eluded my grasp.

    Dorothy gave me the key, she brought music into my home, she taught me music as she taught my child.  She showed through example how to teach with one’s heart and soul.   The magic of little fingers expressing the great emotion of beautiful compositions.  Through her some bitter childhood disappointments were diminished.

    We are just one family touched by Dorothy’s gift , a gift she’s shared with so many.  Her gifts of teaching and creating music are so intrinsic I’m not even sure she realizes what she gives.  She teaches with her heart, she adapts and reacts to the needs and the momentary moods of her students.  Her lessons are constantly interwoven with lessons about passion and patience and building self esteem.  I feel sadness and an incredible loss at her impending leave, yet her gifts have been so personal I cannot feel anger at her for even a minute.  In the back of my mind there  is Alistair, I don’t know him very well.  But then Dorothy must love him.

    Dorothy is always sprinting with children, begging their latest little scooters for a quick tryout and after one of these adventures she pulled some tendons and was benched for awhile.  Tristan chided her that she would have to stop doing stuff like that when she got old, “like when you’re 40" he said, her eyes danced as she smothered him in her embrace,  her eyes darted to me and she whispered  “don’t you dare say a word”.  Dorothy is forever young, from the mouth of babes.

    Tristan and I had a tearful conversation as I explained about retirement and Alistair’s decision.  He asked how old you had to be to retire, I told him around sixty five.  He said “Boy, Dorothy’s husband is a lot older than her” from the mouth of babes. Sorry Alistair but a little bitterness is a normal part of the process.

    So again we must say good bye, but know this Dorothy Fraser wherever there is youthful passion, or beautiful music, or accomplishment and pride upon my child’s face,  your shadow will dance in my memory and my heart.  Blessed have we all been to have you and your unselfish giving in our midst and so lucky are they who are getting your free and magical person and spirit living amongst them.
 

Good-bye Sharing by Lisa Rose:

    I’ve known I was leaving for several months now—and I still have two more to go—so I’ve had a chance to contemplate it. Just yesterday my mother said to me, “It’s easier for the one who leaves.” The one who leaves approaches a new life with a mixture of fear and excitement. New places new friends new rhythms. Little around to remind them of the old life lost. Before going, the one leaving is preoccupied with plans for leaving, may even be overwhelmed by them, and in some ways they’ve already gone long before the U Haul’s loaded. What once seemed to be roots, nourishing and permanent and immovable, begin to recoil. The ones staying behind having nothing to look forward to but the empty space their friend used to occupy.

    Americans move an average of every five years. My real estate agent told me that Americans only hold a mortgage an average of three years. Since I’ve lived in this town seventeen years, far longer than I ever lived anywhere before, I know what it’s like to be left behind. I’ve been left behind many, many times. Attached to Penn State, which is really just an airport with a library and a football team, I began to feel like something was wrong with me for staying—my wings had been clipped. Yet staying was what I really wanted. I wanted continuity. I wanted belonging. I wanted a history. Staying here was like growing my hair, each year another inch, ever longer, more impressive, the longer it gets the greater its worth. Cutting it is a kind of failure, a self-mutilation. After fifteen years of living here, I earned the right to call myself, “a local.” I’ve loved this town, and in the last couple of years, even though in my frantic, over-committed, over-achieving, single mom way, I’ve been too busy to be as good to this fellowship as I’ve wanted to be, I have loved this fellowship. You’ve given me the strength to bear the many huge changes I’ve endured the last two years. You’ve been good for me and Delaney, and I don’t want to go.

    Not too long ago, someone who’d read the autobiography about my life with animals, a story that takes place largely in this town, made the remark, “Letting go is easy for you.” That stunned me. The book, called, For the Love of a Dog, is about nothing else if not my almost Olympian efforts to keep my criminally insane and terminally ill dog alive. The book is about mortality across the species and about the ferocity with which we mortals prize our own lives. We cling to everything. The main reason I kept that dog alive so long is because I loved her, and I dreaded grieving her. Letting go isn’t easy for me at all.

    I was having coffee with two friends a long time ago, right after my dog had died. One said, “Why do you people even have pets when they just die?” And the other bitterly retorted, “People die too. And people leave. Why dare love anyone?” Konrad Lorenz disdained those people who withhold their love in the fear of having to pay the inevitable price that fate will deal them. They’re miserly with the coin of suffering. They lock themselves away like desiccated bulbs. It’s not a question of whether it’s easy to leave or easy to let go. It’s a question of courage.

    Nothing is static. Everything moves. There is no thing or no one or no place to hold onto. That’s been one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn, and I’m still not quite sure I’ve got it. There’s a wonderful passage near the end of the book Dead Man Walking, in which Sister Mary Prejean compares life to saying a rosary. “We hold on for a while to the smooth, round beads, and then, we let go.” What comforts me about that metaphor is that a rosary is a circle. There’s always another bead. There’s nothing to hang onto, except love. Hold on to love.

    Thank you for giving me and my daughter a loving place.
 

Sermon, by Mark Hayes:

    Saying good-bye is difficult.  We must re-write our future story with an adjusted cast of characters.  Some dear ones will be missing from that story, at least in their physical presence.  And as Jack Taylor tells us, saying hello comes naturally, but saying good-bye, and doing it well, must be learned.  If we must say good-bye, what does it mean to do it well?

    On this topic, as on so many others, William Shakespeare had something to say.  In his play, Julius Caesar, there’s a scene where Brutus is speaking to Cassius just before entering battle.  He says, “Whether we shall meet again I know not.  Therefore our everlasting farewell take:  For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius!  If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; if not, why, then, this parting was well made.”  And Cassius replies, “For ever, and for ever, farewell, Brutus!  If we do meet again we’ll smile indeed; if not, ‘tis true this parting was well made.”

    One part of experiencing a well-made parting is recognizing that endings imply new beginnings.  And all new beginnings imply future endings.  That’s the nature of life.  The only way to avoid good-byes is to refuse ever to say hello in the first place.

     Come to think of it, much of what we do here as a religious community involves acknowledging and celebrating endings and beginnings.  Just a month ago we welcomed new members into this congregation, celebrating the beginning of a new phase of their religious and spiritual journey.  That same day we celebrated our new partnership in ministry at our Installation service.  Last week we celebrated the Coming of Age of many of our young people, and witnessed the transition for some from youth to young adult.  This week we honor and remember loved ones lost to death.  Weddings, child dedications and memorial services recognize the beginnings and endings inherent in the building of new families and the departure of loved ones.

     So what exactly makes for a parting well made?  The first thing is the acknowledgment that a parting must take place.  That seems fairly straightforward when the parting is announced in advance.  But it’s easy to deny the finality of such partings.  “We’ll stay in touch,” “I’ll be around, and I’ll come visit.”  I’m ashamed to admit the number of times I’ve said such things, only to get so caught up in the next phase of my life that I don’t follow up on the promises.  The result is that I’ve never really said good-bye in those cases.  Rather, I’ve just sort of disappeared.

     I like Brutus and Cassius’s approach much better.  I may well be in touch.  We may well cross paths again.  But let’s say good-bye as if it really is good-bye.  Then, if we do meet again, it’s like icing on the cake, and it will indeed be cause to smile.  Besides, then we don’t have to feel guilty if we forget to write or call.

     Another characteristic of a parting well made is the willingness to accept and experience feelings of grief.  The end of a relationship, whether by death or by any other form of separation, is a form of loss, and entails grief.  Grief has its beginnings in the twin necessities of attachment and separation.  There is no life without either attachment or loss; hence there is no life without grief.  And when attachments are strong and deep, so the feelings of loss that accompany separation are strong as well.

     Those of you who must leave, we will miss you.  But we accept the pain of missing you as the cost of having had the opportunity to share this time with you.  Poet Dorothy Monroe similarly weighs the gains of living against the inevitability of the ultimate loss: death.  She writes:

  Death is not too high a price to pay
  for having lived.  Mountains never die,
  nor do the seas or rocks or endless sky.
  Through countless centuries of time, they stay
  eternal, deathless.  Yet they never live!
  If choice there were, I would not hesitate
  to choose mortality.  Whatever Fate
  demanded in return for life I’d give,
  for, never to have seen the fertile plains
  nor heard the winds nor felt the warm sun on sands
  beside the salty sea, nor touched the hands
  of those I love – without these, all the gains
  of timelessness would not be worth one day
  of living and of loving; come what may.

     And so the cost of living is death.  The cost of attachment is separation.  But as Alfred, Lord Tennyson reminds us, “Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.”  That doesn’t necessarily ease the pain, but it may well make it worth it.

     I can think of at least one more characteristic of a parting well made.  That is the incorporation of the fruits of the relationship into your very being.  If a relationship has been worthwhile, its effects don’t end with physical separation.  Its influences will continue to guide and shape the way you live and experience life into the future.  Even as we part ways, our lives remain intertwined.  We are now a part of each other’s web of life and experience.  We’ve sung songs together.  We’ve dreamed dreams together.

     May we always be prepared to acknowledge the closing of some doors, even as others open to us.  May we be willing to face and move through the pain and grief that accompany loss and separation.  And, most importantly, may we always carry with us the gifts that come from being in relationship with others.

     On this Memorial Day, as we think about loved ones who have died, one thing to cling to is the fact that death implies that there has been a life.  That life has touched us.  That life has moved us.  That life will always be a part of us.  Regardless of what we may think about eternal life, or the immortality of the soul, we know, with absolute certainty, that our loved ones live on in our memories of them.  They live on through their influence that continues to shape our thoughts and our deeds.  Yes, they live on, even as the ripples that spread across the pond long after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

     I’d like to close this morning with a reading called “We Remember Them” by Roland Gittlesohn:
 

  In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
   we remember them.

  In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
   we remember them.

  In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
   we remember them.

  In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
   we remember them.

  In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
   we remember them.

  In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
   we remember them.

  When we are weary and in need of strength,
   we remember them.

  When we are lost and sick at heart,
   we remember them.

  When we have joys we yearn to share,
   we remember them.

  So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now
   a part of us as we remember them.

     Finally, I leave you with this: May you make the most of the times shared with those who cross your path.  And may all your partings be well made.