Being Human - My Funeral Tribute

I finally was brave enough today to listen to the tribute I made to my husband at his funeral two years ago this month.  My and my daughter’s tribute recordings never made it to the live stream that day.  I promised to put them up on Facebook once I received a copy, but never had enough courage to listen (for my rawness and my blubbering).  So, they never made it to FB.  

That day, only four days after my husband died, I didn’t know if I could speak, instructing those leading the service to go on without me, if I should so signal.  One after one our children, friends, and family spoke beautiful words, making us all cry and even laugh.  I remember thinking it was all true.  Darrell Fields was authentic, funny, passionate, and easy to love.  But, those qualities weren’t what I admired most about him.  What I loved most was his struggle.  So, I stood when it was my turn, coaching my feet to move until I was standing in front of our guests.  I said something like this, “I don’t think it would be honoring to Darrell to be merely triumphal about his life.  The quality which made me love him most was his struggle.”  

Now, finally taking in the audio of that day, I immediately wondered what would happen in our nation if enough of us embraced such a struggle as his. It could be healing to come to terms with how mistaken or learned beliefs allow us to misuse the common space all are allotted in this life.   Will we be able to love as Darrell learned to?  To lay down our lives for others?  Will we be courageous enough to struggle until we get it right? Or, will we continue to justify ill-conceived acts with their ill-received defenses?

I spoke at Darrell’s funeral about a phrase he loved (which he later turned into a refrigerator magnet). He thought I made it up.  I didn’t. I only repeated to him what I heard (somewhere) in order to encourage him some time ago during a crisis moment,  “To be fully human is to be fully aware.”    

There is much from our collective history to pull into our active conscience.  Societal woes beg us to take this journey in order to be whole.  It will be a painful struggle, an inward and deep one.  It won’t be easy to learn and relearn; to learn how we have been able to explain away so much pain; to see how false we can be to our said ideals; to recognize how easily we claim a state of exception and how easily we default to a sort of triumphalism (which necessarily mocks weakness). But like Darrell, who came out of his own echo chamber, we will have to choose to see things we’ve been afraid to see.   Perhaps we will need to be as desperate for our healing as he was.  It will be our love gift to each other as his was to us who knew him.   And just like my beautiful Darrell, perhaps we will become more fully human, perhaps even more fully American.    

Thinking about all this and more today, I decided to finally put up (temporarily) my tribute to my husband. Call it the anniversary effect but I only want to think of him. He helps me. He helps me to cope from a speeding train of more disquieting events after his death, some I never imagined possible but am acknowledging as completely human experiences—just in case I think I am too special for my troubles.