Saturday, February 21, 1998

Funerals for the forgotten are among the hardest for ministers

By Jacquielynn Floyd / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS -- Chin Wee's funeral was a graceful metaphor for his long life. It was simple and dignified. And it offered the mourners comfort and reassurance.

In a thoughtful eulogy, the officiating minister, the Rev. Michael Waco, used details and anecdotes to honor Wee's 82 years, citing his long-ago emigration from China in search of a new life, his military service for his newly adopted country, a long and devoted marriage. And he marveled at Wee's dedication in accomplishing a lifelong goal of sending his five children to college.

The mourners would not have guessed that Waco never met Wee -- or that it was his fourth funeral that day for a stranger.

It's among the most difficult of clerical tasks: to find the words, with barely a day's notice, to sum up an entire life that is wholly unfamiliar.

"My goal is to make the service as personal as possible," Waco said. "The greatest compliment I can get is to have the family say afterwards, 'It's as if you knew him.' "

Every day funeral homes scramble to find ministers to officiate at services for people with no pastors of their own. They're needed to bury the unchurched, the isolated and sometimes even the unidentified. Regular churchgoers' pastors may be unavailable, or ministers may have congregations so large that they aren't acquainted with every member.

Preparing a funeral for a stranger calls on a host of ministerial skills, not the least of which is the ability to prepare and deliver a sermon on a tight deadline, often interrupting routine clerical duties.

But those who make it a habit to "free-lance" funerals say they regard the job as part of their calling.

"If the family asks me, I feel like I have an obligation to that family," said Harold Elliott, a longtime Baptist minister and chaplain to the Arlington (Texas) Police Department. "If a funeral home asks me, I don't have any right to say no."

Over the years, Elliott has officiated at funerals in difficult, often painful circumstances.

"Homicides, suicides, traffic fatalities, crib deaths, everything you can name," he said. Those are not the times to grill families about the deceased's churchgoing habits, he said.

One of the saddest occasions, he said, was the funeral in September for a newborn baby girl, found dead in a trash bin outside a convenience store. Police have never found the baby's parents.

Elliott delivered a moving eulogy for the infant, christened "Angelica," during a service planned and paid for by donors who included police officers, firefighters and an Arlington funeral home.

"Angelica has now seen the face of God, and she will never experience darkness or sadness again," he said during the service, which drew 50 people to mourn a baby they never knew. "She will never be abandoned in the presence of he who promised never to leave or forsake her."

Far more common are funerals for those who, by choice or circumstance, have no regular pastor.

"It doesn't matter whether they're members or not," said the Rev. Dudley Dancer, an associate pastor at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church. "I strongly believe this is a service we need to provide, because I strongly believe that we're all children of God."

Willingness to take on strangers' funerals can involve the occasional bending of theological rules. Protestants have performed last rites to comfort grieving Catholic families; one Church of Christ minister recalls blundering through a Greek Orthodox service.

Some parish priests won't conduct funerals for nonparishioners. But Monsignor Larry Pichard of Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe in Dallas said he never turns families away.

"Our intent is to bring God's care to that family, no matter where they are on their journey," he said. "The judgment is really up to God, not to us."

But it's sad and awkward, he said, when nonpracticing Catholics insist on a full funeral Mass in which they have forgotten how to participate.

"I do find it difficult to celebrate the Mass when the people don't know how to pray it," he said, citing the participatory ritual of prayers, responses and kneeling.

Instead, Pichard said, he encourages such families to choose a less ritualized service.

The Catholic tradition, he pointed out, does not call for a eulogy specifically for the deceased during the funeral.

"We're not really talking about that person's life, but about the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection," he said.

"Of course," he added, smiling a little, "when we can put some icing on the cake, we do it."

Waco, a Disciples of Christ minister, served three congregations over 30 years, but now he specializes in funerals. He is a part-time staff member for several area funeral homes; the largest is Restland in North Dallas.

It is, he agreed, an unusual calling, but a valuable one. Conducting services for people who don't have a pastor is, in a sense, the emergency-room version of the pastoral care business.

He has performed as many as six funerals in one day, and his self-imposed task is to tailor every service to the person who has died.

"Just because they may have been unchurched people doesn't mean we can't celebrate the life that was," he said. "I've done funerals forever, but it's only recently I came to realize how important they are."

Some families ask Waco to officiate at subsequent funerals; the son of a man whose funeral he performed last year asked this year for him to officiate at his wedding.

"In a sense, I become their pastor for a time," he said. "This is the time when people are the most vulnerable, and they need that care and compassion."

Yet sometimes there is no one for whom to care, nothing but a body to commit to the ground.

"I had one service with nobody there but the trust officer who settled the estate," Waco said. "There are some where no one is there but me and the funeral director at the graveside."

In those cases, he said, he can only offer what he believes everyone is entitled to in death.

"I just do a prayer, and words of commitment," he said.

Dancer said such services are sad and memorable. He has conducted lonely services for friendless paupers and for those who outlived their contemporaries.

"It's simple," he said. "Just Holy Scripture and the Lord's Prayer and a commitment into the hands of God. But it's something you don't forget."

And then there are funerals for those about whom there is little good to say.

"If you have a person who was exceedingly bad and everyone knows it, it's very difficult," Elliott said. But he officiates nonetheless. Every life, he said, is entitled to a funeral, even if it was squandered.

"I've known of some people who had no service, who just died and were cremated," he said. "We've not honored or dignified that person. Somebody, somewhere, probably cared for that person at some time."

Pichard agreed. "Even Mafia members have funerals," he said. "You hope for salvation; you hope for them to be with God."

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Dancer said that when he meets a family -- often briefly and only once -- he tries to get as much information about the deceased as he can. And he seeks to offer pastoral care to survivors with no regular pastor to whom they can turn.

"It's what I call 'kitchen table theology,' " Dancer said. "It can really be in some ways a psychological release" for families stricken with grief or exhausted from nursing a relative through a final illness.

And sometimes, especially in cases where the deceased suffered a long illness, the family needs encouragement to remember the loved one's best years.

One family, he said, abruptly recalled that their father had been a crack naval engineer who helped develop crucial technology for building pontoon bridges. Another reminisced about their grandmother's love of opera music.

And often there's healing laughter as family members swap stories: "In most cases, it's the first time since the death they've sat down across the table and said, 'Let's talk about Dad.' Or they'll start telling the story of how Uncle Bill fell off the porch," Dancer said. "Nine times out of 10, they'll end up laughing."

Sometimes, Dancer said, he has to gently dig to pry the memories loose.

"They'll say, 'Dad's been in the nursing home with Alzheimer's for five years,' and I'll have to ask them to remember him before that," he said. "I'll start asking, Did he raise cats? Did he like the Cowboys? Did he have a garden?"

Dancer and other ministers say they count on such meetings to prepare their remarks for the funeral.

The stories create mini-portraits of a human life, and sometimes, Dancer said, he regrets not having known the deceased.

"I had an 87-year-old woman who, two weeks before she died, was riding a motorcycle," he said. "I told the family, 'She was my kind of gal.' "

It's those memories and anecdotes, Dancer said, that give the minister -- and, in turn, the mourners -- a chance to celebrate a life rather than a dry set of facts.

"The statistics in the obituary are not the person," he said. "The stories are who they are."

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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