Funereal Thoughts

Tonight, I to the fun’ral-parlor went,
There to see the body of a saint,
Who, two days past, this mortal coil did leave
And to the arms of Christ, her Lord, was sent.
And as I stood, surrounded thus
By friends, who many months I had not met,
Both young and old, who came as I—
Their last respects to pay,
I wondered if any of them felt as I—
Sad, and ready now to weep and mourn—
Though not for her, who unto Paradise
Was giv’n, nor even for her husband,
Who for more than sixty years hath had her.
The one no heartache knows,
For she in everlasting pleasure rests;
The other, tho’ old, is strong
And shows no outward sign of loss.
No, the reason that I give for feeling thus—
As though I should betake myself to bed
And cry for hours, if not days—is this:
Sometimes the world seems joyous to me,
As if there were no care or end of good,
But now, surrounded thus, by relatives and friends,
Her body in the casket, gently lit
(How odd the earthly temple seems,
When, bereft of spirit, it lies still—
It seems made of wax, and molded by a master)—
It is now that I remember that from dust came men,
And thence they go again—
That nothing here forever will remain,
But all is doomed to sometime its end know.
How can I be happy in this world and body of death?
Tomorrow, the church's hallowed halls
I, with my presence, shall grace,
And there, with all these people I have seen tonight
And more besides, will learn of her life—
When she was born, when she wed,
How she trusted Christ as Head—
Meaningless to the rest of the world,
But not to us, the few who knew her.
And then I will enter depression, as I have done
After every other funeral that I ever attended—
Is it wrong to feel thus?
To mourn not that she died,
But that death lives?
It seems to me that ‘tis not right,
For “death is swallowed up in victory,”
Yet something in me also says ‘tis right,
For did not even Christ, our Lord,
Also groan inside, that this world
In sin should so exist?
I know not, but with this hope console myself—
However dim, at times, it may be seen—
This world is not my final stopping-place,
But go I on to worlds as yet unseen,
Where Christ shall wipe all teardrops from my face,
And I shall worship Him, my Master
And my Saviour, in the light of His glory.

—12 May 2010

This might be terrible? It is the first time I tried to articulate what has been a constant thought, however.