tears and a funeral service

I attended a funeral service last Thursday. It was different from what I've seen before. There were just two of us, Ieva and me, and the dead resident. He died the previous week at the age of 63. We couldn't find any of his relatives to contact with. Last Wednesday, Ieva asked me if I could do the service with her. She said if we didn't do it, then there would be no service at all. I said yes right away.


Thursday morning, we met at the funeral hall at 10:30. Then we were led to a basement room. There were two sofas, two chairs, a small table and his body in a coffin. That was all. We sat there to waited till the scheduled time came, 11:00. Meanwhile, Ieva went out of the room twice to make phone calls to our nursing home to confirm if anybody else would attend or not, 5 minutes or so for each time. During then, I was just alone with the body. When I was a child, I was scared of dead bodies terribly. I hated ghosts stories, haunted houses at amusement parks, being alone in my room at dark.... This time, to my surprise, I was not scared at all, rather I felt peaceful. He was there still. He didn't move, looked like just sleeping. I thought he might have awake soon after taking a nap or so. I felt calm.

At 11:00, we started the service by just two of us. We stand beside the coffin. Ieva started to read the funeral prayer from the Hymn book. We sang a Hymn "Be Still My Soul" together. Ieva stared to read another prayer. I noticed her voice was changing little by little to nasal tone, and weakened. Then I knew she was crying. She couldn't finish the prayer so I read the last line and we said "Amen" at the end together.

I remember Ieva once told me that she can't cry before people. It was just before she got officially retired from the job this June. At that time, as we were walking along the hallway, lots of staff and residents came up to her and gave her sweet comments and hugged her tightly. I was impressed to see the beautiful scenes. And I'm sure she was impressed by everybody's sweet comment, too. Ieva told me that she felt like crying, even got choked up, but no tear comes out. I know you could get rid of a choke-up by crying. Tears wash away your chock-up somehow, even partly. I understood her mind and felt sorry for her.

So I was a bit surprised to sense her crying during the funeral service, at the same time, I was somehow glad with it. I don't know why. Maybe I thought that she could cry before me because we built up our good friendship. I might be wrong but I felt so and somehow glad with it.

Then I sang a Hymn "O Jesus, I Have Promised" solo just for the dead resident. I chose it and practiced it at home the previous night, remembering his smile. As I was singing, I hoped his peaceful life without any pain in the heaven with God.

I felt warm although the body was real cold when I touched him at the end of the service.
We had a good time with him. I thank him to let us have a good peaceful time altogether.