just enough light

My dad died 7 months ago. Hard to believe. His death did not make a big splash. He slipped from this life hardly rippling the water. Only a few people knew it when it happened, and there were few to inform once it did.

 Had dad died any time in the past several decades, his death and funeral would have made a splash. Baptist pastors make splashes. Dad was a shaping and guiding force in the lives of thousands of people throughout his 70-year ministry. His death would have made the news, his funeral would have packed the house. As it happened, news of his death came from his sons to the few people in the world who still knew him.

I attended the funeral service for a respected attorney many years ago who had died suddenly and unexpectedly. He was in his 50s. The family and community were stunned. The church prepared for a large crowd, bringing into the sanctuary as many folding chairs as fire code would allow. Still the crowd was too large, and a closed-circuit broadcast of the service was hastily arranged in the fellowship hall for the overflow crowd.

A friend standing near me waiting to enter the sanctuary said, “This is what happens when you are well loved and you die young.” The attorney’s death made a big splash not only in the lives of his wife, three children, and large extended family, but in the community.

I guess my friend might have said of dad’s death, “This is what happens when you are well loved but outlive most who knew you.”

I always thought I wanted a “big splash” funeral. I wanted lots of people to show up, to tell stories, to cry and laugh, to sing loud. I guess I thought I would be gratified by that, but, of course, I’d be dead and unaware. How much splash my funeral makes will more likely be a matter of when I die. The longer I wait, the smaller the splash. That realization is sobering and helpful.

The helpful part is that if I want to make a splash, I should focus on making it now, not at my funeral. Dad did make a splash in many lives over his 95 years. In his final days, when he was too old and tired to make a splash, he still created ripples in people’s lives by how he interacted with those who provided care for him. He was kind and personable and inquisitive, and he expressed his gratitude to those who dispensed his medicine, made his bed, brought his meals, and wiped his butt. Most left his room smiling.

I suspect and hope that those ripples he made for 9 decades, even in his final days, will continue to spread out, even when no one remembers who started the ripple. I think that’s the most we can all hope for, making positive ripples now that will continue after we have slipped away.