I'm not inclined to read advice columns but I noticed an intriguing headline this week for the New York Times column called The Ethicist, which has a bit more gravitas than Dear Abbey, at least in the title. Philosophy teacher Kwame Anthony Appiah responded to someone who was unsettled after attending the memorial service for an elderly friend which was warm in the expression of shared memories. It was disturbing, though, that the person was portrayed as a life-long Christian by his Baptist family when in fact he became an atheist and enlisted this friend's help in typing his views a decade before, presumably as an explanation to his family. He had also been openly gay for 50 years and shared a long-term relationship, but this was not acknowledged.
The question was, is it ever proper at a memorial service to offer — gently, of course — corrections of fact?
The response was several paragraphs in length but ended with, So even if the facts about their relative would have saddened them, it would have been right and respectful to speak the truth about the man you knew.
Well, choosing that path would have been interestingm and while I'm not sure I agree, I don't know that I disagree. Through the years I've presided at services where the deceased lived with addiction, or was abusive, or took his/her own life. These are not the same, but they can all be the source of secrets. Some families chose to acknowledge these realities, others didn't. Some families had nothing good to say about the person who died and some walked into a chapel with no recognition of each other.
In one instance a young man died of AIDS and his conservative Christian family held a funeral where it was implied that he'd died of cancer. Because I was on the AIDS committee in the city I was asked if I would preside at a memorial where his friends could be more honest about who he was and how he died. I did so in the lovely chapel of the congregation I served rather than in the much larger sanctuary. The parents were invited and the father came, causing some nervousness for those who needed to grieve. Would he distrupt the service or shun the others present? He wasn't exactly warm, but he was gracious, and thanked me for my role.
In the end, there is no script for how we address the sometime painful realities of life and our acknowledgment of death. The Ethicist was correct, it seems to me, in naming that Christianity at its best strives toward truth. That's what we can all hope for, God being our helper.
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