Taking Care of Business

When someone close to you dies, there is a lot of paperwork to tend to.  Call it the business of bereavement.  Fortunately, Bruce and I had made the decisions around what would happen to our bodies when we died and we’d paid for it ahead of time.  At the time, it felt really good to manage those details and share them with our kids and then tuck them away because we couldn’t imagine that we’d need them anytime soon.  We were both very healthy and we were looking forward to many more years together.  

Birdwalk:  Please do this hard work.  Depending on where you live, you have many choices as to what happens to your body when you no longer inhabit it.  In Washington we can be buried in a green burial; embalmed and buried in a casket and vault; cremated,  (and then what happens to the ashes?); undergo aquamation (and then what happens to the remains?) or undergo soil transformation.  We chose soil transformation through Earth Funeral, which has a low impact on the environment and is a gentle process for the body.   Each of the kids and I got some of his soil and the rest is reforesting a beautiful property near Port Townsend.  I’ve written about this before..   But please,  save your family members from having to do the very hard work of making this determination when you die.  

There’s all of the other business:  financial matters and taxes and wills and probate and changing your status on social media.  Prepare to spend hours on hold.  Or in an awkward office where you have to explain to three different bank tellers what has happened.  There are lots of books and brochures and people to walk you through these early processes.  Even then, it’s not easy. 

I’ve moved on recently  to:  how do I take care of my car?  Or, rather, two cars.  If I walk into a mechanic’s shop as a single woman of a certain age do I just look like an easy target?  How do I know which car to keep and which one to sell? 

Then there’s the matter of what to do with your loved one’s things.  We’ve sorted a lot of Bruce’s  already - clothes and books and the like.  His phone and his computer are still on his nightstand.  And then there are the photos, which as you might imagine are numerous.  And the digital files.  And the photo equipment - more cameras than I can count and lights and light stands.  And he had some things tucked away I’d never seen.  There’s a photo of an elderly couple on the train station platform in Bastille that is possibly one of my favorites of all of the photos he’d taken.  And there are photos from Kent State, that he took while covering that terrible day for the Kentucky Colonel at the University of Kentucky (yes, he was AT Kent State).  And the list goes on.  

It’s a lot, but it’s also not going anywhere.  I’m making progress with the mountain of a to-do list.  I will get there, whatever that means.

Here are some things from this week that have filled my heart:

• Dear parishioners brought me a beautiful star gazer lily plant for Valentine’s Day.  They said that when they saw it they could hear Bruce say to them “Please buy this for Julie”.  How lovely is that?

• Another parishioner bought me the biggest box of chocolate I’ve ever seen.  It’s enormous!  And she’d wrapped it so beautifully with a HUGE pink bow.  If you’re at the church, come to my office - I’m sharing! 

• It was a privilege to serve as a retreat leader for a fun and faithful group of women from another congregation in our synod over the weekend.  We gathered at a beautiful retreat center, complete with an outdoor fireplace and spectacular views and we enjoyed delicious food together.  

• Yesterday a friend and former music director from Seattle worshipped with us at Gloria Dei.  He has the most amazing voice and I could hear him as we sang Transfiguration hymns together, relishing the last of the Alleluia’s for awhile.  

• Same worship service, the final communion hymn was Beautiful Savior.  I could hear the voices of these people I love and with whom I serve blending in beautiful harmony.  And then it happened….our organist dropped the accompaniment and the voices were all that was left - clear and wondrous.  The perfect farewell to the liturgies of light.  

For those of you who observe such things, Lent begins this week with our foreheads marked with our mortality.  Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  It hits differently this year.