THE FUNERAL OF MY UNCLE, OSCAR JERNSTROM: A time of self-revelation and retrospection.
As Catholics, it is ingrained into us at an early age to do a daily self-examination of our soul, our state of being with God, with our neighbor, and with ourselves. We do not always do this consciously, but rather on a subconscious level be it rumination or an examination of conscience.
The death of someone we love and/or admire triggers within our human hearts a discernment of what life is all about. I have a bumper sticker that says, “What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it is all about?”, an existential question, indeed! Is life only about self-gathering around us those things we want in life, including our relationships with others? Or, is there some other purpose to life than just procreating a new generation of human beings and occupying time and space for a number of decades?
I have come to think of life as a vast school curriculum for the human soul; a time of deep and experiential learning. Our lives are not about acquiring, but about learning how to love as God loves. Our lives are about how to become human in the manner that God intended humanity to be when God created us. I am not an expert in world religions, though I must confess that the Eastern religions notion of reincarnation can be a comforting thought. If one fails in one lifetime, one is held back a grade, so to speak, to try again. Our Christian notion of life is a bit more drastic and grim, for it holds a pass/fail outcome at the end of life. If we pass, we go on to eternal life heaven. If we fail, we go to spend eternity in everlasting torment in hell. (AN ASIDE: There was once a Far Side Cartoon with two panels. The first was of an individual entering heaven and being given a harp, with the caption, “Welcome to heaven. Here is your harp.” The other panel depicted an individual entering hell. As he entered, a devil hands him an accordion with the caption, “Welcome to hell, here is your accordion.”) As Christians, early on in life we learn to get serious about what our lives are all about for there will be significant consequences at the end of our lives. (As Sr. Angeline once told my 2nd grade class. “Ten of you will be going to hell when you die.” A sobering thought for a 2nd grader, even though we knew which 10 individuals would be eternally damned.) We use the life of Jesus in the Gospels and the wisdom found in the letters of Paul, Peter, James, and John as our guide in living our lives with purpose and love. The following is not so much a reflection on my uncle, Oscar Jernstrom, but more about how his death has impacted my life. It is ultimately about how well I am learning the lifelong curriculum of love in my own life.
It should be noted that what follows is taken from the quick thoughts I wrote on Facebook in the wee hours of the night and early in the morning, while the thoughts and feelings were fresh and still a bit raw.
The last two days were spent en route to Pittsburgh, to be at my Uncle Oscar’s wake, his funeral, the funeral luncheon, and en route home again. These days were significant, as most days surrounding a funeral are. The death of a loved one is a significant rite of passage that not just impacts the one who is deceased, but impacts the lives of all whom the deceased has touched while alive. It causes the survivors to wrestle with the age old question of what lies “beyond the pale”. It tests the faith of survivors. Is there really a God, a heaven and a hell? What will I experience when I see God face to face? (This reminds me of the old Henny Youngman joke, “What do you say to God when God sneezes?”) Has my relationship with the deceased ended permanently, or does it continue long after the body of the deceased has been buried? It also makes us reflect on our own death and our own fear of death. Woody Allen expressed this succinctly in a joke he composed during his days of doing stand-up comedy. “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Or for those more existentially minded individuals out there, the joke that Steven Wright once told, “Last night I was playing solitaire with tarot cards. Five people died.”
Anxiety
Traveling to Pittsburgh, PA for my uncle’s funeral and being with my Pittsburgh family triggered all sorts of thoughts and emotions for me. Emotionally, it was a time filled with anxiety, sorrow, joy, discomfort, fatigue, connectedness, and ultimately, self-affirmation. Hard to imagine 48 hours filled with all of that.
The anxiety arose out of not having traveled very much since the first of the three hip surgeries. Because of the MRSA infection that made me hipless for 6 months, following that first hip replacement and the multiple surgeries to drain the infection, my left leg has never fully regained all the muscle tissue that had atrophied. This led to being so reliant on the right leg, that that leg had to have the hip replaced, and, then this past Fall, the knee replaced. The anxiety arose out of knowing that with all the walking through airports, I would be working those artificial joints like they have never been worked before! Then there was the TSA, but as I posted earlier, I haven’t been that intimately touched in a long while so it was, in its own way, more a pleasurable experience than a disturbing experience.
Some anxiety also arose from being separated from Ruthie. Back in 2005, I did 3 weeks of Spanish immersion in San Antonio. It was mind-lifting and educational in many different ways (I found it fascinating is that the priests and seminarians with whom I studied knew all the $2.00 Margarita bars in the barrio). It was also torture being away from my bride, Ruth.
In theological terms, the word ontological is used to describe the subtle but very real transformation that occurs in a sacrament. I discovered how much being married to Ruth had utterly changed me, not in the sense that we are codependent on one another, but in the sense that after all these years (41 married, 49 since we started to date) we truly had become one heart and one flesh. To be separated for any length of time from Ruth is spiritually and emtionally painful. That 3 weeks in San Antonio were incredibly torturous for the both of us. When I had finally gotten back to the airport after that very long 3 weeks, I expected my daughter, Beth, to pick me up from the airport because Ruthie had to work that night. Imagine my great surprise and overwhelming joy to see my lovely bride walk up to me at the baggage claim! She had called in sick, so she could meet me at the airport, and, unbeknownst to me, had arranged a welcome home party for me. From that time onward to go somewhere without Ruth is difficult for me, for she is such a part of who I am. So, there was some “separation anxiety” in my mix of emotions. We, of course, talked multiple times by phone on Tuesday, and three times on Wednesday, twice by phone and once home, in person when she arose to go to work.
So with all this anxiety why go at all? Easily answered, my Uncle Ozzie. My Uncle Ozzie and Aunt Mary are like second parents to me. Judging by what has been said by many, I am not the only one who feels thus connected to the both of them. Though I can count on one hand the number of times we have been in the same room over the past 20 years or so, the connectedness to these two very special people has remained rock solid intact. It was not a matter of having to go, it was a necessity for me to go and honor the man I loved and valued almost as much as my own father.
Sorrow
In forty years of church ministry, I have been at, presided at, and played music for many, many funerals. As stated earilier funerals are a pivotal part in people’s lives. We celebrate their lives touching our own. We celebrate their relationship with the God who created them. Ozzie’s life had touched so many lives, and I believe that it was a result of his life being so intimately connected to the God who created him.
The Jewish philosopher, theologian and Rabbi, Martin Buber in his theological masterpiece, I And Thou, expressed three places or thresholds in which we encounter God. The first, is in nature and the wonders of God around us. The second, is in our inner personal relationships with others which Buber describes as windows through which we gaze on the face of God. The third, is that interior place known only to the individual in which the individual and God meet and interact.
It is that second threshold in which we encounter God that is the most operative at the death of a loved one. In our love relationship with another, we see and experience the presence of God.
I have often expressed that my greatest experience of God has been in my married relationship to Ruth. While Ozzie probably never quite expressed his relationship to my Aunt Mary in similar terms, I am quite sure he would acknowledge that to be true, too. It was extremely sorrowful to know that Ozzie would not be occupying that familiar corporal form he inhabited for over 91 years. To not hear his voice, hear the stories he would tell, to experience him in person, is a tremendous loss.
That is a hole in one’s life that can never be filled. The Lutheran theologian and pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer expresses this so well. “There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve — even in pain — the authentic relationship.”
Sorrow is an important emotion to acknowledge and experience. It means that something very important is missing in our lives. The sorrow expressed at the loss of a person is in its own way the ultimate compliment, the penultimate affirmation, for it means that that person we have lost had enriched and added so much value to our own lives. It was this sorrow I felt deeply at both Ozzie’s wake and funeral.
Joy
I would like to express something about the joy I have experienced in my two days in Pittsburgh.
In many ways, my family has been part of a family “diaspora” over all these years, separated by a long distance from all my cousins on both sides of the family. Because my father’s work placed him and us in the upper Midwest with a part of that time in Chicago and a longer span of time spent in Minnesota, the chance to connect to my East coast family was limited often to the two week vacations we would spend in the Pittsburgh area when we would stay either with our Aunt Ruth and Uncle Joe, or, as Bill and I experienced, with our Uncle Ozzie and Aunt Mary. Going to Pirate games at old Forbes Field with our 2nd cousin Regie Walsh, playing with our cousins Jerry, Mary Greta, and Reg Jernstrom and visiting my Uncle Bob and Aunt Babe and their children Ann, Bob, Tommy, Linnea, Mary Grace, and, of course my mom’s cousin Jill, and her husband, Big Jim and, of course their son, little Jimmy Ertzman (I can’t recall whether I am spelling their last name correctly), and Jill’s mom, my mother’s Aunt Sarah.
Sadly, as Bill, Mary, and I began high school, the trips out East every Summer began to get fewer and fewer. After my ordination to the diaconate, I remember Ruthie and I driving out to Pittsburgh with our daughters Meg and Beth to visit all my cousins. It was important to me that Ruth and half of our children (Andy and Luke were busy working) get to meet these wonderful people who were so important to me as I was growing up.
On that trip, I observed how close all my cousins were to one another. They were one another’s best friends. While it sounds a bit idyllic, there appeared to be no inner family resentments, but rather a blessed harmony. I was so graced by what I observed and grieved what I had been missing all the time I was away. It reminded me of the closeness of Ruthie’s family and I remember being envious of the closeness they have with one another and how I (nicknamed Wag) was adopted into the sibling relationship Ruthie shares with her brothers and sisters.
The joy I felt on Tuesday and Wednesday, as sad as the occasion was, was that reconnection to my Pittsburgh family. To be with them, to grieve the loss of Ozzie with them, was in a sense a joy to me. I was one with them again. We have all grown up since those days in the 50’s and 60’s. We have all married and had our own families, and yet, the solidarity of the past returned as if it never had passed. I wasthe only one present with a Minnesotan accent, (NOTE: In contradiction to that wretched Cohen Brother movie, “Fargo”, only a very few Minnesotans, generally with surnames like Christiansen [chris-JOHN-son] or Johannsen [yo-HAHN-son] say ufta [OOF-tah], youbetcha [u-BETCH-ah], and donchaknow [doh-chah-NO]. Incidentally, Fargo is in North Dakota and not Minnesota. Minnesota has lakes and trees. North Dakota’s state tree is a telephone pole and the State’s topography is flatter than a pancake.), the cultural oddity immersed in Pittsburgh culture and surrounded by that remarkable Pittsburgh manner of speaking. However, everyone immediately made me feel entirely at home. There is a hospitality inherent to Pittsburgh which is a bit different from what we call in Minnesota, “Minnesota Nice”. (NOTE: Minnesota Nice is not genuinely nice. Minnesota Nice is just a way of saying “passive aggressive” behavior.) Even the folks at the hotel treated me with a friendship that is not always present in Minnesota (provincialism is a trademark of the multiple cultures of Minnesota).
I want to thank my Pittsburgh cousins for being so wonderfully gracious to me. You are very special to me. Though we live so far apart, you are never far from my thoughts and never have been over these long years of separation. My sister, Mary Ruth, while she was alive, was very good about keeping connected to our PIttsburgh family, our Cleveland family (Bobby, Maryjo, and Kelly) and our Virginia family (we haven’t forgotten about you Kathy and Cheryl. I hope the chance to visit you comes soon, too!). Thank you for being in my life. You bring so much joy to my life.
Fatigue and Self-affirmation
Lastly, the emotions of fatigue, discomfort, and self-affirmation. The fatigue was largely related to doing so much in very short span of time. Church ministry doesn’t allow much in the way of time away, because of the demands ministry makes in one’s life. While my life is not the 24/7 lives of the dairy farmers around New Prague, my life is usually 24/6 (that is if a funeral doesn’t take away my one day off a week). While it was imperative for me to be at my Uncle’s funeral, it was also imperative that I fly in on Tuesday and leave Wednesday afternoon to get back to my church responsibilities.
I was up at 4 am on Tuesday and out of the house by 5:30 am, to get to the park and ride, shuttle to the airport, check in with the airline and the TSA, and then fly to Pittsburgh, find where the baggage is, find where the car rental is, drive in a new city, find where the hotel is, find the funeral home, be present at the wake, and, crash sometime around 8 pm. So much for Day 1.
Day 2, up at 6 am, pack everything, eat breakfast, check out, go to the church, look over the intercessions, funeral, burial, funeral luncheon, back on the road to the airport, check in the rental car, check in luggage with the airline, get frisked by the TSA, find the terminal, fly back to the Twin Cities, find luggage, find shuttle to the Park and Ride, drive home, and get there by 8:30 pm. Almost the end of Day 2.
When I pulled into the driveway at 8:30 pm, I received a call from my cousin Regie Jernstrom who wanted to make sure I got home safe. (Thank you Regie, you are so thoughtful!) Then I noticed I received a call from Bruzek Funeral home alerting me to the death of a parishioner. At 8:45 pm I called the funeral home, arranged a time to meet the grieving family on Thursday to plan the funeral being held on Saturday, and then realized I had not eaten since the luncheon.
The day ended with me popping some popcorn, which the dog insisted that I share with her, until it was time for Ruth to get up and go to work. I waved goodbye to Ruthie as she drove off to work at 9:30 pm, opened the refrigerator and saw the Brandy Manhattan she made for me on a shelf. I got a couple of ice cubes, sat down, and sipped the drink. My intention was to watch the news and then the first part of Colbert before unpacking the suitcase and going to bed. I never made it to the sports. Fatigue combined with brandy, sweet vermouth, and three maraschino cherries makes a sleeping potion that is hard to resist. When I awakened, the TV still on, it was 12:30 am and I had to reorient myself to time and place. I then unpacked the suitcase, set up my CPAP, crawled into my pajamas and crashed. Four hours later, I was up and at it again, greeting Ruth when she got home from work at 8 am, eating my toast and banana and 16 ounces of Dunkin Donut coffee, and off to church by 9:30 am.
I am still feeling a bit of the fatigue as I type this out. But it is a good kind of fatigue. Is there discomfort? Of course, I demanded a lot from all my artificial joints (As they say in agrarian society, I feel a bit held together by bailing wire and bubble gum). But the artificial joints held up and did what they were required to do. They are a bit sore, but that is why there is aspirin and Tylenol. The pain and soreness will pass. I will return to Anytime Fitness tomorrow (today that is) and walk a couple of miles on the treadmill, increasing my distance and endurance.
And, finally, self-affirmation. This is related to the anxiety about which I first wrote. The major question that brought on anxiety was whether I could make the trip after having had 6 years of surgery with all the recovery that accompanies surgery (In 2011 alone I had 5 surgeries. From 2012 to 2016, 4 more surgeries.). It is easy to possess some self-doubt after all of that. The death of my Uncle forced me to face my fears, my anxiety, and compelled me to take chances. I did all of it, and not only survived, but thrived, albeit with my limitations still being what they are.
To be back home embraced by my beloved, Ruth, is heaven. To have been to Pittsburgh in the welcome embrace of my Aunt Mary and all of my cousins was also heaven. If the embraces of those we love are heaven on earth, imagine the divine embrace of God that Ozzie is now feeling.
At Ozzie’s funeral we sang a couple of hymns that Minnesota liturgical music composer, David Haas wrote years ago (“The Lord Is My Light And My Salvation”, and “You Are Mine.”). David also set new words to an old Irish/Scott folksong melody named “Marie’s Wedding.” I would like to conclude with the text he wrote for that melody.
Onward to the Kingdom
Refrain: Sing we now, and on we go; God above and God below; Arm is arm, in love we go Onward to the kingdom.
- Star above to show the way, Through the night and in today, With the light we won’t delay Onward to the kingdom. (refrain)
- Come now sisters, brother all, Time to heed the Lord’s call, We will travel standing tall Onward to the kingdom. (refrain)
- In the promised land we’ll be, One with God, where all are free, The deaf will hear, the blind will see When we reach the kingdom. (refrain)