The unexpected death was the hardest. When my grandfather died it felt like the universe had lost something big. He taught me to love the forest and the importance of taking care of it. He was a tall physically strong man, a retired army officer. He and my grandmother used to hop onto military transport planes (many years ago) and fly wherever the planes were going. Turkey was one of their favorite countries. I had a deep ache to explore the world learned from them. When my grandfather died, it was utterly unexpected and hit me like a ton of bricks. I kinda believed he would never die. He seemed so invincible! As a young American soldier who was fluent in German, he was part of the 42nd Rainbow Division and was a liberator of the concentration camp at Dachau. I threw myself into getting my dad and my grandmother through the funeral. I needed a focus desperately. The day of the funeral with full military honors, it was sleeting out. Miserable weather for a miserable day. But, upon waking the next morning, the world was covered in deep pure white snow. For this girl living her life in the south, this was an incredible gift! It screamed, “Live! Play!” I rushed my kids out to buy snow clothes and sleds. It was like my grandfather told God, “I order you to send an early snowfall!” My grandmother laughed with tremendous joy watching us hurl ourselves down the hill behind her house. Life just didn’t just go on it needed to be thrown down a snow covered hillside with snow shoved into places too personal to mention!

My father, a retired attorney, was succumbing to his Parkinson’s related dementia, and was pretty much confined to bed in a nursing home. Grim, beige, in a town about 6 hours from my home. My mother had died about 13 months before, after 60 years of marriage. My brother lived in his town, and knew and trusted the management of the nursing home. I was able to visit over Thanksgiving weekend, and spent time with him, both with other family and by myself.

On the morning I was due to drive home, I stopped in to see him one last time. He wanted to know when he was leaving. I said I wasn’t sure, and asked where he was going. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you?”

I said that as far as I knew, he was going home to the place he loved best: the Indiana sand dunes. He could set up his sketch pad and his easel on the hill above the water, overlooking the beach. The sun would be shining, the waves were gentle, and Mom was standing knee-deep in the shallows, talking with friends after her swim. His children were building sand castles and calling to him to dig them a boat in the wet sand (One of his wonderful magic ways with children as to dig into the sand at the edge of the water and create a boat or a car for them to sit in and drive).

I described his favorite stretch of dunes, remembering for him and myself all the beauty and wonder of spending summers there. When I ran down, he said, “Let’s go. I’m ready.” A little while later, I said good-bye and left for breakfast with my family. I told them what I’d said, and suggested that they build on that when he asked them. They did, for the next couple of weeks. And then he died.

When I was doing my CPE, I was on call one summer evening at a hospital in the Midwest. Early in the morning, I was awakened by a page to come baptize a baby who had been born too early and had died at birth. Her parents wanted her baptized, so she’d have a name.

I went up to their room, wondering what on earth I could possibly say. Mom was in bed, crying, and Dad was standing beside her, sobbing into a hospital washcloth. They were holding hands, and the baby, tiny, tiny and still, was swaddled in a blanket in Mom’s arms. They said they were Christians, and that they wanted to make sure that the child would have a name. They wanted a name to call her by, to refer to, to know. A nurse remained in the room the entire time, quietly standing beside the bed.

I assured them that their child was with God, that she was safe, and that she could be named. I named “Carolyn Alicia, child of God, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of us all”. I spoke to her, as her parents listened, telling her she was loved, hoped for, looked forward to, and that her parents were sadly disappointed and grieved that she had so little time with them. I assured her that she remained in their hearts and their family, that they would remember her and call her by name, and would keep her close. I then prayed with the family and the nurse, asking for strength, patience, and comfort as they mourned and released their sadness, in time, to God.

The nurse followed me out of the room to tell me that she was impressed and comforted by the words used, and by the care offered. She said that most pastors and chaplains had a hard time with this kind of request.