The Place Between

Rainy. A little cool. The fog not yet burnt off.
The grass is wet. Freshly cut.
It sticks to your shoes.

You are here to give a funeral for a stranger,
a man never met except in the last hours,
where not conscious as he held your hand,

You watched him die, heard the last breath
as it rattled and ceased, surrounded by family,
all just met, their sharings of stories ceasing

as he fell silent.

Be with someone in that last moment
and you are no longer strangers.
You are bound in some way,

your spirits connected
even when there is no other connection point.
You know nothing about them,

except that, the moment of transition
from now to eternity,
which brings you here, once again among families

you barely know, somehow able to celebrate
what was, and more importantly,
what is to come.

About this poem

I am doing a funeral this morning. I do a fair amount of them as a result of my twin jobs as a pastor and a spiritual counselor for hospice. This poem is more a conglomeration of times past and funerals past than any particular one.

In the Christian faith, despite how we mourn for the lost one, there is an awareness of a beautiful eternal life after life. I always feel my job, when doing a funeral is to connect where we are, to that place we hope to be, to connect the two in joy.

The picture was taken in nearby Hebron, NY.

Tom