I sang Amazing Grace at my uncle Gordon’s funeral this morning. It was both harder and easier than I expected.
Harder because the whole day was hard. My uncle died entirely too young after a simple outpatient medical test went horribly wrong in May and his body began a rather quick decline as his organs went into failure. None of us were ready to see him go, but we did our best to give him the best possible goodbye.
Easier because I got to spend the day with so many members of my family. Some of them I barely knew, a few of the younger ones I had never met, and many of the older ones looked so different from the last time I saw them that figuring out who was who ended up being quite a challenge.
Most of my family were in Oklahoma and had short drives to get to Clinton. I had the longest flight, followed by that of my brother and sister in law. I’m so glad that we could be there for our family.
I am not going to pretend modesty about my voice. I have a very beautiful soprano voice. I don’t use it often enough. A talent squandered, you might say. I’m working on remedies to that, like singing regularly at church.
But today, it was about sharing that voice, and all the emotional depth I can use it to share, with my family as we wept and laughed, and hugged a lot, as we said goodbye to Uncle Gordon.
To bad he isn’t here to tease me for my formality by replying “niece kathy” to me, as he did when I was a child.
~kat
