Affirmation of Faith

I was dri­ving to the “view­ing.” She died quite unex­pect­edly, although she had been in declin­ing health for a period of years. No one — not even those of use clos­est to her — antic­i­pated that her life would end as sud­denly as it did. I was still in a state of shock as I made my way to the funeral home.

I have no idea why her fam­ily decided to hold a “view­ing” rather than a memo­r­ial ser­vice or even a tra­di­tional funeral ser­vice. They invited only a few friends and close fam­ily mem­bers, inform­ing us that the “view­ing” of her life­less, embalmed, earthly body would last for pre­cisely two hours. Dur­ing that brief inter­val, we were wel­come to drop by the funeral home, gaze upon her as she lay in repose, pay our respects to her fam­ily, and then be on our way. Iron­i­cally, she had been estranged from most of her fam­ily for many years and had nei­ther spo­ken nor seen those who lived near her for more than a year.

I almost didn’t make the trip. After all, she was my friend. Through the years, I met var­i­ous mem­bers of her fam­ily and some of her other friends, but never devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with any of those folks. Rather, my con­nec­tion to them was solely through her. Now that she is gone, I thought to myself, I will never have any fur­ther con­tact with any of any of them. So I ques­tioned why I was plan­ning to drive sev­eral hours to pay my “respects” to a group of peo­ple who were vir­tual strangers to my good friend. I con­sid­ered stay­ing at home and rais­ing a glass in pri­vate to a woman whose friend­ship meant so much to me for so long.

She lived in the moun­tains that she loved pas­sion­ately on a small plot of land far from the main high­way, sur­rounded by tall pine trees and pop­u­lated by the many ani­mals to whom she was devoted. So I was only able to visit her home when the weather was good, the roads clear. In the win­ter months, when the coun­try roads that led to her door became impass­able — some­times for days at a time while the res­i­dents waited for the snow­plough crew to finally arrive — we com­mu­ni­cated by tele­phone and email. But, iron­i­cally, on this day, the weather report called for a break between storms. So, fin­gers crossed, I began the journey.

I could not explain why I felt com­pelled to attend when all log­i­cal dic­tated against wast­ing the time and energy to make the trip. But an unseen force pulled me toward that funeral home, even though I knew as I would not “view” my friend’s dead body, in part because she would have been appalled by her family’s deci­sion to put her remains on dis­play. She would have pre­ferred to sim­ply be recalled for her for­mi­da­ble and opin­ion­ated, but big-hearted and infi­nitely mem­o­rable per­son­al­ity, her laugh­ter fill­ing any room she entered, with a deli­cious meal and toast offered with a glass of the favorite Mer­lot she enjoyed heartily and often.

The sky was dark and fore­bod­ing as I nav­i­gated the inter­state. At times, I con­sid­ered turn­ing back, fear­ful that the rain pound­ing my vehi­cle with such force that I could barely nav­i­gate would turn to snow. But I pressed on.

To my sur­prise, when I reached the exit that took me off the main high­way to com­mence the last leg of the jour­ney, the sun began to break through the clouds. Lis­ten­ing to some of the tunes my friend loved, I began to relax, enjoy the drive, and remem­ber some of the many happy times I spent with my friend.

We spoke about our faith and beliefs on many occa­sions. Although she eschewed the insti­tu­tional, patri­ar­chal church many years before I did, she was an intensely spir­i­tual and intu­itive per­son. She read and stud­ied the Bible through­out her life, and could quote, explain, and argue the mean­ing of Scrip­ture with as much author­ity as any pas­tor I have ever known. Gath­ered around her din­ing room table, she deliv­ered many infor­mal hom­i­lies, hold­ing her guests spell­bound before send­ing them on their way to con­tem­plate her wis­dom and philosophies.

I won­dered, as I drove, if she was at peace, ful­filled. We had talked many times over the decades about heaven, spec­u­lat­ing about where it is, what it is like, how we would know and find each other when reunited there. “I hope you’re there and it’s every­thing you hope it would be,” I whis­pered aloud to her. “Save me a place at the table,” I said at the pre­cise moment I glanced up at the sky in breath­less astonishment.

The clouds directly in front of me had parted slightly to reveal a patch of per­fect, iri­des­cent, unblem­ished blue sky. It hung in mes­mer­iz­ing con­trast to the grayish-white back­ground upon which it seemed to be super­im­posed — in the unmis­tak­able, per­fectly formed shape of a cross.

I reached into my purse for my cell phone and began look­ing for a spot on the side of the road where I could pull over and snap a photo. But the road curved and I real­ized that from the shoul­der of the high­way, the view would be obscured by the trees. I then noticed that the clouds were mov­ing — another storm was immi­nent — and the dis­tinct lines of demar­ca­tion that out­lined the shape were soft­en­ing. As I drove, through the wind­shield I watched the clouds grad­u­ally pull back together, delib­er­ately fold­ing in as though a cur­tain were being pulled shut at the con­clu­sion of a per­for­mance until the patch of blue melded seam­lessly with the sur­round­ing gray as though it had never been vis­i­ble at all.

For awhile, I thought I had imag­ined those few, sur­real moments, but the over­whelm­ing sense of peace that soon over­took me — and has remained with me in the ensu­ing weeks — evi­denced the truth: The image of the cross was real and designed for my eyes to behold. That I had no oppor­tu­nity to stop and snap a pho­to­graph was part of the plan and the mes­sage meant for me alone.

“We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squint­ing in a fog, peer­ing through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, know­ing him directly just as he knows us!” (1 Corinthi­ans 13:12.)

Inspired by:

• Café Chat: “Tell of one spe­cific time in your Chris­t­ian walk that you were over­whelmed with God’s love for you.”
• What I Learned from …a Side­walk Group Writ­ing Project at Mid­dle Zone Mus­ings.

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