Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A footbridge in the Beartooth Mountains

In his book, Lenin’s Tomb, the last days of the Soviet Empire, David Remnick wrote that millions of people disappeared during Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror, but there were no funerals.

Some people disappeared for a few days and then returned, saying nothing of where they had been. Some disappeared for a year or two and then mysteriously returned; again, saying nothing. Some never returned.

Their friends and family knew enough not to ask. They did not report the disappearance to the police. They did not ask among their friends and acquaintance. They didn’t even explain the situation to their children.

Since the missing sometimes returned they had no funerals for them. How can you memorialize the dead who might be alive? Can a woman remarry if she might not be a widow? Can a child search for another father if his father is still alive?

Without funerals they could have no reminiscences about the departed, nor prayers said, nor cemetery visits. They could not reweave the family ties where the beloved had been. It is hard to imagine how people could retain their sanity under such circumstances; and many took to vodka for relief.

As terrible as that may sound, it is not that alien to our American experience. In my three years at the Louisville VA I have seen men die with no one to grieve them. I presided over one funeral with only the undertaker, two sailors sent by the Navy and the deceased’ landlady. She was kind enough to come.

On another occasion, I stayed with a woman and her two daughters as she discovered her husband had died. She had intended not to be in the hospital when he died, but she mistimed her final visit. He had always been abusive, and was more so since the onset of his illness. Because he had stipulated there should be no funeral or memorial service, the three of them left the hospital with no plans for a ceremony.

In today’s first reading, Ezekiel describes such a catastrophe. The City of Jerusalem will fall before the enemy and the disturbance will be so traumatic, they will have neither time nor inclination for funerals. Men, women, children and animals will be slaughtered. Survivors will be lucky to keep the clothes on their backs. By the time they regain some sense of normalcy they will be removed from home by several years and many miles.

Funerals are a cultural expression of grief, but when the culture disintegrates funerals disappear. The catastrophe may be brought on by earthquakes, floods or war; or it may approach more subtly, with alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, sexual predation or family violence. It may be as close as next door.

In such a place we grieve our dead and pray for those who have no one to grieve for them.