So I went to this funeral

Sam and I went to Etta's graveside service on Thursday morning. The casket had beautiful pink and white roses on it and there were two beautiful floral arrangements on either side. True to form, Jack picked out one of the lovliest caskets for Etta--if there can be such a thing. Hers was a golden color and had sleek lines. But I digress.

Jack has a long, illustrious career as a church administrator: Union President, Treasurer, pastor, missionary, publishing director for the denomination, etc. He worked here at the university on special projects for years. It explains why he can speak knowledgeably about so many things. But to his credit, when Etta had her stroke 9 years ago, he became totally focused on taking care of her. Since she was then confined to a chair he had to do all the cooking, taking her water, helping her up to the bathroom--everything. And he did. His cooking left her cold at times, but he baked pies and cakes, and caseroles. I just remember her telling me once that she didn't like having pancakes for supper, and she had rolled her eyes. One of the few times she ever said anything disparraging about Jack. But he did all that he could to help her. And after I brought him home from his cataract surgery, his first thoughts were of how Etta was doing. He walked in the house, went straight over to her chair and kissed her on the lips. It was admirable. And that was the Jack who I knew--the man who loved and cared for his wife.

The pastor who gave the homily at Etta's service began with, "Etta was born in Moosejaw--and anyone from a place like that has to be a strong person!" Then he went on to eulogize not Etta, but Jack: all the posts he had held, the important jobs he did, the places he went, and where he knew Jack. Little was said about Etta. Then he opened up the microphone for others to remember Etta. People stood up and paid tribute to Jack. A few oblique references were made to Etta, but she was largely ignored at her own service. "I remember being in their home..." "Etta stood with Jack during years of great responsibility..."

As I looked over the group of people who were assembled there, I realized suddenly that many of them had come because they knew Jack, but not because they knew Etta. Why? There were probably a number of reasons, but women of her age were raised to stand by their men with the expectation of losing themselves. In fact, their identity was their husband. She was part of the package back in those years. I can picture her standing to be recognized whenever he traveled to distant churches, and that would be the size of it. People wanted to see Jack, hear his advice, seek his counsel. She just tagged along and people had to think of some way to occupy her time while he was doing the important things with "the brethern." Since they had no children, there would have been limited opportunities for her to be known as an individual by other mothers or teachers. Before she died, Etta told me that there were years when she hardly saw her husband because he was out on traveling assignments for his church jobs. She wouldn't see him for months at a time. "It drove me crazy, being left alone all the time. I used to get after him about it and he would smile and say, "Now Ett...."" So it must have been a bittersweet irony for her to have him so accessible after she had her stroke.

But hardly anyone remembered her at her own service. I was dumbfounded and disappointed. I said a few words about Etta out of respect for her, but really because I truly loved her. I wish the others could have known her as I did, because they would have not run out of things to say.

I didn't know Etta during all those years of Jack's ministry. Maybe she was a recluse, or she was such a wildcard that Jack was glad for her to stay at home out of the limelight. Maybe she got into some kind of trouble while he was away. Knowing her now, I can see that she must have been a force to be reckoned with and she could have been considered a problem wife because she was direct and outspoken--the very things I loved about her. That would not have been received well. But surely, someone at the funeral remembered her as a sweet, generous, good-hearted person who would give anything to anyone.

Women don't have to be the silent shadow behind great men anymore. We can be remembered for who we were, after we die. But perhaps what I witnessed was due to something else. People change over the course of their lives. I'm sure that the doting husband Jack was at the end of Etta's life was not the same person he was in his earlier, ambitious, career-building years. And if Etta was "a problem wife" of years past, she surely wasn't at the end of her life. There was no one sunnier, more uplifting, or interesting to visit. People change. There are predictable phases of development in our lives.

As I look at myself, there are core values and behaviors of mine that have not changed since I first became an adult and moved here to California. But I am as different as day and night when compared with attitudes, career, beliefs about myself and life, people skills, etc., to the very naive young lady who was an ICU nurse years ago. I would hope that I have grown up a bit, become more mild mannered and aware of other people's needs and expectations. And yet in that concern for others, I have become more attuned to myself. This is part of growing up, and I am hoping it continues (because I would not want to stall out here!)

So Etta's funeral has given me reason to review my own life. Had I died at several other stages in my life, I would have been eulogized for entirely different things. Perhaps. I would hope that some things will never change about me, but I'll never know. As I wrote some years ago:
"Perhaps the most important thing that I take with me from the many deaths I’ve been part of is this growing hope: When it is my time to die and I turn around to look back at what I did here, I want to see a life lived with joyful abandon, yet fully saturated with all of the feelings and experiences that could be packed into my years." (Couden, Journal of Loss and Trauma).
If that is the case, it doesn't matter what people do or don't say about me at my funeral service. It matters what I know about my life as I die. I'm choosing to think that this could have been what happened with Etta.
God rest her sweet soul.