The Wedding and the Funeral

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

My friend performed a wedding ceremony on Saturday. She said it wasn’t at all what the couple anticipated when they got engaged. No large group of friends and family; no reception; certainly, no exotic honeymoon. Just the young couple and those they loved most in the living room of the family home. None of those present could have guessed less than a month ago that the rules for “social isolation” would supersede even the lifetime dreams of a young bride.

We’ve had both a wedding and a funeral at my house. (There’s a sentence I never expected to write!) The funeral was first. My husband’s father was kind of a curmudgeon who lived alone the last dozen years of his life. He resisted our invitation to leave Houston and move in with us—I acknowledge that a household with eight screaming children might not have been the peaceful retirement option he envisioned at the end of his career. Instead, he preferred his close proximity to the Gulf Coast and the diverse fishing options it offered. My husband says when he was a kid, he and his dad would buy a couple of pounds of shrimp for bait on their frequent salt-water angling trips, and if it turned out that they didn’t catch anything, they’d barbecue the leftover shrimp for dinner. Win/win.

We worried about Grandpa living alone in his later years. Worry apparently never occurred to him. Once a young thug jumped the privacy wall around his apartment patio, thinking my father-in-law would be easy prey. The old man smiled at the kid through his sliding glass door and pulled a loaded pistol out of the desk at the end of the couch. The kid wisely jumped back over the wall and disappeared into the dark. Word apparently spread. It never happened again.

My kids loved it when their grandfather visited. He’d take us all out to dinner, and the kids got to pick where. We frequently had a Volkswagen van filled with happy kids munching on Happy Meals. Food was one of the few things that quelled the incessant squabbling which was endemic to our clan. (Thank you, McDonald’s).

Grandpa Voorhies was a two or three pack-a-day smoker from the era when cigarette smoke was the most pervasive odor in most shops and restaurants. Eventually, cigarettes killed him. My husband flew to Houston to be with his dad those last days. His father had arranged to donate his body to the University of Houston Medical School, so there was no need for a burial. Most of Grandpa’s friends and fishing buddies had already passed away. In the end, my husband decided to host a memorial service where it would matter the most—at home with the grandchildren his dad loved.

Son #1 and my husband bought out the fresh seafood section of a local grocery store and cooked up a feast we knew Grandpa would have approved. We invited the few neighborhood friends whom Grandpa had gotten to know. We prayed together for the welcome reunion he must surely be enjoying in Heaven, and then we loaded our plates with cracked crab legs, shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce, battered fish, and we sat down to tell Grandpa Voorhies stories. There were a lot of them. It was an extraordinary day–Grandpa would have loved it.

The wedding was equally unexpected. From the time she was fifteen, a teenager in our neighborhood whose family had been in a fairly unstable situation lived with us. She finished high school, joined the extended family on some memorable trips, went on a mission from our house, came home and got a job at a local hospital, and started college.

A fellow at work asked her out. She said no. He asked again. She said no. He asked a third time. She said no again. Then she began to wonder if she was missing something? So, the next time (he was very persistent), she said, yes. Sort of Hallmark—y, don’t you think? Only a couple of months later, she and her brand-new fiancé asked if it was OK if they got married in our living room. They were older and didn’t see the need to spend a ton on money on the “foo foo” she’d read about in wedding magazines. Daughter #1 and I laughed. Sure, we said. If that’s what you want, we’ll go all out. By “all out,” I mean we put up a congratulations banner, bought some flowers, fixed some yummy desserts, and helped the bride pack up her 10 years’ worth of belongings.

Our local Bishop presided. His wife came– along with fewer than a ½ dozen total family members from both sides. It was simple, tender, and, in many ways, far sweeter than any other wedding all those of us present had ever been to. What mattered was that we loved her, and she loved him.

So, I guess that’s the key. Now the world is in upheaval. Daily life has taken on a surreal filter: schools dismissed; jobs teetering in unfamiliar territory; graduations cancelled; ceremonies and celebrations in limbo. But the sweetness is still here. It’s the love that matters.