In the Wake of Mercy

The first wake I attended, at age 6, was for my 3-year-old cousin Jean Marie, who died of leukemia. For the first time in my life, I saw adults and children cry for the same reason.

The dominant impression was one of pink: pink flowers, pink funeral dress, pink rosary beads, pink headstone, pink-rimmed eyes - a gauze-like haze of pink. Pink satin lined the inside of the coffin. I remember the patterns of the fabric reflecting the ambient light and moving magically back and forth as I moved. Tongues were hushed. Lights were dimmed. The air smelled of that strange redolence of all funeral parlors: part hospital, part antiseptic, part perfume, part flowers, part carpets and furniture that only a couple hours before had been cleansed with an industrial astringent. The room looked too clean. What did it all mean?

Suffice it to say, my first confrontation with death-up-close puzzled me.

Accepting Death: the Residue of a Decision
By the time of the wake for Fr. Mark Garrow, MIC, on Oct. 24, my puzzlement had long changed to acceptance. Puzzlement only occurs in someone who expects to acquire the answer to a mystery. Acceptance is the residue of someone's decision that no answer is needed and therefore lets the mystery be what it is. I have since come to look at "death" as a word that is a synonym for "the life of the soul." That life we cannot see nor can we yet understand. We're lucky to have understood, partially, the earthly life that has left us behind.

The death of a loved one always accentuates the time lost that was once shared, or could have been shared. We think of the things we did for the person ... and didn't do. The time we spent with him ... and didn't spend. The prayers we said ... and didn't say. This is the mercy of grief. In keeping watch over the body, we are both celebrating shared experience and making up for lost time, the real meaning behind the contraction for "goodbye," or "God be with ye'." No wonder we keep vigil next to the corpse. The body, which is no longer of use to the departed soul, is of much use to us.

One Last, Long Look
With these thoughts in mind, let me share some wandering notes from Fr. Mark's wake, held at the residence of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception:

• Laughs and smiles, cries and hugs, loud and boisterous, silent and somber. Is there any other human ritual that so artfully combines these "A through Z" instinctive states of mind?
• People speak of Fr. Mark. Their reflections are like mirrors held up to the image of the man. They remember, and each memory is different though each shares the same core, which is the man himself. Father Kaz Chwalek, MIC, as close to Fr. Mark as anyone, speaks. With my friend John Foster and about a dozen other people, I wait outside the standing-room-only den of the Marian residence, where the body is laid out. I cannot make out Fr. Kaz's words, so I concentrate on his cadence, as if listening to a song. He isn't speaking. He's singing ... a lullabye! How beautiful. When Fr. Kaz finishes, I make my way into the room. The air pressure goes down considerably.
• The new Provincial Superior, Fr. Dan Cambra MIC, invites everyone to pray. Brother Ken Galisa MIC uses his superb, mahogany-toned voice to lead the room in singing the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy. The notes sprinkle over the room like holy water. Does it help? You bet it does.
• The line forms to approach the casket, a hard-pressed single file of mourners, waiting to share one last prayer, take one last look. A red-padded kneeler is positioned directly in front. The pads are ready for a few hundred impressions.

- Two mourners, a man-wife couple, complete a simultaneous half-genuflect on the kneeler. Again in unison, they make the sign of the cross. They peer into the casket. Here, they part. The woman touches the body and dabs her eyes with a tissue. The man, stoic, seems locked up by an inarticulate prayer. Even as thoughts, words are hard to come by.
- Two nuns kneel in front of the body. They are solid, constant, unmoving. Prayer emanates out of them like heat refracting from a newly tarred road on a 100-degree day. From my position on the couch directly in front, the air seems to shimmer. Or is it my tears?
- Three Marian novices are next. Two, Thad Lencton and a young man whose name I don't yet know, repair to the kneeler.
- Rich Dolan, a big, hulking first-baseman of a guy, kneels on the floor to the left, at the head of Fr. Mark. I see another spectrum of A to Z: three just beginning on the Marian road praying to one who has just ended his journey. He ran the good race and has shown the young guys how to move. He has shown them well.



After watching the long line, patterns begin to emerge.


• The old and the young act differently in front of the corpse. The old look calm and self-contained. They know death as real, have seen it many times before, and react as they would in the presence of an old ally ... or enemy. The young look puzzled. To them, death is as abstract as it is incomprehensible. They are 14, they are 18, they are 20, and they are 22. They know they will live forever. How right they are, but in a way they can't yet imagine.
• Two young girls approach the body. They kneel. They look absolutely dumbfounded. This isn't disrespect. This is innocent ignorance that the years have cured for the rest of us.
• Priests and nuns keep vigil differently than the laity. They seem calmer and at the same time more urgent. Death is part of their business the way a cracked cylinder head is part of a mechanic's. For instance, Fr. Larry Dunn, MIC, approaches the kneeler in a processional way, rosary in hand, pacing small steps as in a ritual. He's precise in what he is doing and clear as to why he's doing it. He knows exactly where he is. God must gift good people with a spiritual GPS system. I think of another Donne saying another form of goodbye, the poet John, who wrote after separating from his wife: "John Donne/Anne Donne/Undone." All things must pass.
• The last in line is the irreproachable Br. Albin Milewski, MIC, one of my personal Marian heroes. He has been sitting next to me. His mere presence lends gravitas to my wandering thoughts. He doesn't know it, but Br. Albin is helping me focus my thoughts. Thanks, Bro. Finally, the wake line thins out, and the last person kneels down. Brother Albin gets up, taps me on the arm, and says, "I better go and pray to him. Nobody's there now." Now you know Br. Albin.
• Carol Scott-Mahoney quickly occupies the chair next to me. She is pilgrimage director for the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy. She sits, makes eye contact, smiles, and says nothing. It is the right thing to say. The green-padded folding chair I'm sitting on creaks and groans. I know the feeling. Carol sits lost in prayer, her eyes brimming.
• I get only one actual quote, from Fr. Matt Lamoureux, MIC: "This is bittersweet. We feel the loss of Fr. Mark here on earth, but getting him to eternal life? That's a different story. He wanted [the wake] to be this way. He wanted us to gather as a family and celebrate rather than mourn. He wanted us to give thanks on his behalf for all God had done for him. That's what I see in this room now." Sometimes, one quote tells the whole story.
• Celebration not mourning. Both are present actually, but the former trumps the latter. Conversations rise. Words compete as people talk, renew friendships, and love one another, for isn't that what one's presence at a wake demonstrates? This too is mercy in action. Just showing up.
• Scattered throughout the room - on a shelf, a table, in groupings, in pairs - are photos of Mark Garrow taken throughout his life. "Life as an Exhibition" I'd call this show. If body language has a vocabulary, Mark's favorite word had to be "life."



Death Speaks in Words All Its Own
The body.

A laid-out body talks in words all its own. The grieving read these words like a blind man reads Braille, by feel. You can't just look at a dead body. You have to feel it.

Its suffering can no longer upset us, though there is at least some trepidation when we confront a corpse. We tremble on two accounts: the reality of the person's death can't help but set in and punch us in the stomach, and the reality of our own impending date with earthly finality cannot help but peek around one of the casket's corners. Try as we may, we cannot miss its presence. We will see it out of the corner of the eye, whether the eyes are wide open or wide shut.

And tell me, is there any prayer more earnest than one recited in front of a dead body? No, for it is the dead, coaxing an expression of life out of us. If that is not a form of mercy, than I might just as well pack it in now.

Mark Garrow's earthly remains rest in an unadorned wooden coffin, its simple lines giving off connotations of "uncomplicated ... uninvolved ... effortless ... painless." Even the heavy, burnished handles speak of humble practicality and not pretentious ornamentation. And if I know Mark Garrow, he prayed for the tree that had to come down for the workers to make this box.

The coffin rests in front of the fireplace of the great room in the Marian residence. On the carved mantle of dark wood, two candles in angel holders softly illumine the left and right flanks. The flames sway, their tips white, their bodies yellow, their bases blue, and their centers colorless. The flames pay tribute. I think of one of my favorite analogies for God: He is Light.

People come and go, each dealing with the loss in their own way. Like the candles, they are imbued in color. Some are white: these are the pure, and there are some pure people in and out of this room. Some are yellow: These are the joyful. Some are blue: these are the sorrowful. Some are colorless: these are the numb. I think of another of my favorite analogies: God is Love. These are people, each uniquely loving as best they can.

A Silver Christ, an Oxblood Cross
In the center of the fireplace, the sky-blue Marian shield officiates, flanked by pictures of angels. The frames are shaped like arches in a Gothic window. I can't see clearly, but the angles appear to be playing instruments, the one to my left a tambourine, the one to my right a harp. Floating above the coffin directly in front of the fireplace, a large crucifix poises on a stand hidden from sight.

A silver Christ is outstretched on a cross of oxblood wood, His slumped head leaning in the direction of Fr. Mark. The ribs stick out like keys on a xylophone. A soldier's lance pierces a rib, producing a note that only animals and saints can hear, a red-and-pale pitch, which is love and mercy itself. I am imagining this, of course, but that does not explain it away.

Two incongruous images decorate the fireplace, a magnificent hewn relic of a bygone craftsmanship. The images have been carved into the top left and top right corners. Look up, and to the sides you will see the two laughing faces, grinning on the threshold of a leer, half-jester and half-gargoyle. The original gargoyles of old were carved into stonewalls to carry away water from roofs and battlements. They also had another less practical purpose: they were meant to scare away evil spirits. The two faces atop the fireplace at the Marian house are strictly ornamental, put there by the original builder of the manse on Eden Hill. They add a mischievous touch, something Mark Garrow would have loved. I wonder how many people have noticed these two grinning faces? I would bet that Mark did.

A Softening of the Edges
To the left and right of the fireplace itself, the Marians have placed two standing lamps. They wear inverted half-shell hat shades of pinkish-white milk glass, the kind you could only find in a fine antiques store. These hats of glass cast rays of rose-colored light, softening the edges of that part of the room.

It's a beautiful presentation, and shouldn't things be beautiful on an occasion such as this? Beauty in sadness is like oxygen to a man underwater. It is necessary. Give me sadness unrelieved by pulchritude, and I will show you the face of gloom. Father Mark did not want this, and give credit to his Marian brothers for seeing to the beauty throughout this room.

To the far left as I look at the casket and body, immediately in front of the piano in the corner, a statue of Mary stands on a pedestal. I don't recognize the statue as Mary the Blessed Mother. Maybe it's the other Mary, Magdalene. I ask Fr. Larry. "It's Our Lady," he whispers.

This piece of artwork shows a woman of sorrow. The face looks different from any other statue of Mary I can remember seeing. Is this the statue they bring out to witness to a death? There are no clouds, no angels, no stars, and no heavenly hosts about this Mary. No serpent lies crushed beneath her feet, no world supporting her stride. She wears her garments enveloped by grief. But this too is beautiful, when you think of why she suffered. It is not gloom. It's motherly sacrifice. The sword that pierced that heart is a double-edged blade, also pointing the way to the Resurrection and the Life.


• At the loudest part of the evening, when the paying of respects is over and the camaraderie has fully kicked in, voices blend into one another in a sustained noise, like a wall-to-wall carpeting of sound waves filling the air ... and the ear. Amid this, Fr. Larry takes out his breviary and begins to read and meditate. I think of the Zen masters who welcome the clouds of mosquitoes so they can ignore them, and by doing so, concentrate even more fully on their prayer.
• Wake = vigil = constancy = mercy in action. I have seen the face of mercy today. A casket contains it but it cannot hold it. I see with physical vision the hundreds who have come by to pay their respects. I see with the heart's eye the life of a man gone away but not for long.



Seeking Joy, Giving Thanks
Life comes in. Life goes away. Life goes on.

Read in a fortune cookie later that night: "Seek your joy in the precious suffering that the gift of life entails."

Death awakened Fr. Mark, whose wake awakened the others in the room. Oh yeah, and me, too.

We seek our joy and give our thanks.

Dan Valenti writes for numerous publications of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, both online and in print. He also authors "Dan Valenti's Mercy Journal for this website.

csdea

You might also like...

Recently, I spent a weekend catching up on yard work. I mowed, swept, shoveled, raked, and weeded. Call it spirituality amongst the dandelions.
Pain and suffering are universal experiences, says His Excellency the Most Rev. Zygmunt Zimowski, top Vatican prelate on healthcare issues. Archbishop Zimowski says the answer to dealing productively with these experiences can be found in God.
Mercy would be the logical next step for this Pope, given the intimate and intense role that God's mercy played in his personal life.