I helped at and attended a happy funeral on Saturday, May 6.
Then I came home and was slapped in the face with bloody reality.
First, the funeral; then, the bloody reality.
My husband and I, on May 6, spent four hours at our church helping to set up and clean up for a funeral. In between, we attended the funeral.
It was the happiest funeral I'd ever attended.
Not because we were happy the deceased was no longer with us, but because we were celebrating a life that was lived well.
Keith Johnson attended my church for a number of years, and among other things, he sang on our church's praise team. Fewer people had a wider smile than Keith, and fewer people could encourage you like he could. So I think it was appropriate that the funeral began with a video clip of the three Johnson brothers, including Keith, singing "Mansion, Robe and Crown" at their father's funeral.
Brother #1 ratted out brother #2 by telling of a time when brother #2 would "terrorize" baby Keith. One day, Keith settled the matter by taking a Fisher-Price toy and bopping brother #2 on the side of the head. Problem solved.
Later in the funeral, tears surfaced as one of the two brothers stopped in the middle of his speech. The other brother came up to give him silent encouragement and the speaker was finally able to go on.
Tears also surfaced when one of Keith's daughters spoke of what a wonderful father he was to her. Another daughter shared the same sentiments.
Keith had been an athlete throughout his childhood and high school. But he developed heart problems in his life, and then later, cancer hit and eventually killed him.
Despite his heart problems, I never heard Keith complain. He continued to greet everyone with a smile, and Don, our preacher, spoke about how Keith did the encouraging when Don would ask how he, Keith, was doing.
I enjoyed the genuine affection and love the family had for each other and for Keith. And not only did his family have that genuine affection, so did his friends. So many people that I had not seen in months and years came to our church to honor Keith.
That attitude of respect and affection overflowed into the reception after the funeral. Volunteers made sure that our fellowship hall was set up and filled with food. And we left plenty over for the family (I said to several people, they will not feel like cooking for the next few days.) At one point, an elderly couple came up to my husband and me (we happened to be standing at the pass-through between the kitchen and the fellowship hall) and wanted to know if we were in charge of the operation. We looked at each other and said, "Well . . ." The man went on to compliment everything as a "well-oiled machine". I said, "Keith loved us, and this was our way of loving him back." (I immediately went to the elder's wife that was mainly in charge of asking for volunteers and told him what he'd said. She was one of those people responsible for that "well-oiled machine".)
Exhausted after four hours of serving, my husband and I elected to forego cooking and picked up dinner from Chick-Fil-A.
It was after I ate and was checking my phone for Kentucky Derby results that the first reports came in of a shooting in Allen, Texas, at a shopping mall. I'm ashamed to admit that my reaction at first was, "Again?" It's mid-May and I have already lost count of the number of mass shootings there have been in this country. Midtown Atlanta, about 20 miles from where I live, had their own on May 3rd, just three days prior.
Then I started seeing the casualty reports: Nine dead, including the shooter; and at least seven wounded.
And some of them were children.
I turned to Twitter, which is often where I get my breaking news these days (which may or may not be a good thing).
In the tweets dealing with the Allen shooting, I saw approximately 5-10 seconds of a video I wasn't sure was real: a group lying on the ground, blood smearing at least one person's legs, and a face that I am not sure was open in an eternal, permanent scream, or that had the lower half of it blown away. This is allegedly a video taken of certain victims at the Allen mall, a very graphic and gruesome video that probably should not have been on Twitter in the first place and that took over 24 hours to get taken down.
From a happy funeral, where I was reminded of the value of a life well-lived, I was plunged back into the bloody reality of sudden, violent, needless death.
What more can I say? What more can anyone say?
I refuse to say "thoughts and prayers" (although I believe prayers can help), but we're thinking and praying when we ought to be acting.
I don't have solutions.
I'm at the age where I'm going to more funerals than I am baby showers and weddings. When I go to funerals, I want them to be "happy funerals", i.e. funerals that truly are a celebration of someone's life, where the preacher doesn't have to lie or gloss over the bad parts of your life.
I do not want to go to a funeral that, while it may be a celebration of a life well-lived, was caused by someone who, for whatever reason, took a deadly weapon and senselessly murdered eight people, wounded seven others, and whose bloody reality was splattered all over social media for the world to see.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
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