by Johnny Zokovitch
I’ve been attending a lot of funerals lately. Some, in my pastoral minister role at a small church, have been for people I didn’t know at all. For others, my main connection has been to the spouse, mourning a loved one who I never met because they were struggling with dementia of various types; or to the adult child saying good-bye to a parent I only knew through their stories.
A few have surprised my heart because of their tenderness. Our church is known for its inclusivity and we’re often the place of last resort for families or friends who want to mark the life of someone they love but for whom most churches – especially Catholic churches – would be places they never would have entered because of the pain or exclusion they had experienced at the hands of “religious people.” They reach out to us because they know we’ll not only respect the fullness of the people they love, but celebrate and honor them in a way that is consistent with their wishes.
And some of these funerals have been for folks who no longer have family, friends, or colleagues to remember them – only a social worker, nurse or hospice chaplain who wants to be sure they’re given the dignity in death that was so often denied them in life.
At nearly every funeral, there is a moment that brings me up short with the deep, broken beauty of what it means to be human: a daughter who shares that her mom, suffering from Alzheimer’s and no longer remember her dad’s name, would still reach out and take his hand and say, “This one, he’s the one I love.” Or a community of formerly homeless men, relating to the one among them who was taken into a nursing home and died a week later, each shaking his head about how good it would have been for him to die here, in the house they all share, where he had found refuge from a life on the streets.
One of the most recent funerals was for Barbara Schultz. I met Barbara through her daughter, Amy, who was a student at the University of Florida when I was a campus minister. Over three decades, Amy became like a sister to me, and that meant her mom became part of my family too.
We tend to remember, communally, the lives which are the loudest, those who became known for some grand gesture or larger-than-life undertaking. But Barbara’s life was a witness to peace, beauty, love, compassion and justice delivered steadily, unfailingly, day-in and day-out. Her funeral was a time to draw all those threads of her life together, any thread containing more than enough for one lifetime. A wife who lost her husband when they were still young and raised five daughters on her own. A mother who dedicated 50 years of life to caring for her disabled daughter Annie. An activist for peace and justice with Pax Christi. A Montessori-trained educator, Master Gardener, and poet.
Barbara was one of the unheralded founders of the Gainesville Catholic Worker where I lived and worked for almost 15 years. She made up the difference for us when we were just a few thousand dollars short of buying the house that would become our house of hospitality. She graced our community several times over the years, loving my children and playing with them sweetly, offering authentic and easy conversation with our guests, and trading playful barbs with me about our often at-odds viewpoints on alternative health remedies.
Some people point to the “great man theory” as an explanation for how history is changed and shaped by legendary, outsized, charismatic individuals. I would push back on that. It seems to me that every life nudges history this way and that. And that the cumulative effect of the lives of millions of good yet hardly well-known people have a power greater than we realize.
Each funeral I attend convinces me that every seemingly ordinary life contains a hidden extraordinariness that is revealed in death, so achingly expressing for those of us left behind the beauty of a humanity we all share.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.
What a gorgeous testimonial and to the legions of unsung heroes who quietly and tenderly go about making the world a better place without trumpeting their many and profoundly meaningful small acts of great love.
Thanks for this beautiful reflection on the art of dying. At its best it is a communal experience as much as it is a deeply personal experience. I also remember Barbara. She was a good person with a good heart. She will be missed. As my Jewish friends would say, “May her memory be a blessing for all of us.
Beautifully written. Reminds me of my 26 years pastoring a Latino parish in Lansing, Michigan, Cristo Rey Church. We never turned away anyone for a funeral. And every time I thought the deceased would have only few people to attend, at least 50 to 100 would show up. A testament to the strength of honoring community and family connections, a value our country at large could use a lot more of!