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JULY – AUGUST 2011
From the Design Studio of Stefana Eternal comes the faith inspired collection
TALES FROM L.A. A ‘PC’ Version of Death by Fr. John S. Bakas
If you drive the major freeways in and around Los Angeles you will see large conspicuous billboards announcing in large, bold letters, “Celebrate a Life. Call us and we’ll tell you how.” It lists an 800 number. At the bottom in small letters almost hidden, it says: “Forest Lawn Mortuaries.” What the billboards don’t tell us is that in order to celebrate that life, someone has to be dead. I wonder how many people have called the 800 number to arrange a party celebration only to find erroneously that they are talking to a mortuary phone operator. We live in a “death denying” culture yet we hold fast to an Orthodox Christian faith which is “death defying.” In the first three months of this year I have conducted 17 funerals here at St. Sophia Cathedral. I have gotten to know the various funeral home people very well. Riding in the hearse with them in procession for burial, in one of at least a dozen Los Angeles cemeteries, I have been told by these somber mortician friends that my Orthodox eulogy references for the dead are not “politically correct.” “Educate me so I can get it right,” I told one halfheartedly. “Well,” he responded, “this is ideally what priests and ministers who conduct services for Forest Lawn should say: A coffin is a casket. A hearse is called a coach. There are no pallbearers. We refer to them as casket bearers. Never say dead person or dead body but the deceased or the loved one or just refer to them by name.” I started to take notes in the coach during the last funeral in May and found myself biting my lip as not to chuckle. “Oh, there’s more,” he said. “We don’t bury people. We inter them. The loved ones are not buried but interred.” “Are we getting close to the cemetery?” I asked. “No, no” he said. “We are a couple of miles away from the memorial park.” “Good. It’s getting a little warm in the hearse…oops, I mean the coach.” I responded. I remained silent as we entered the lush covered grounds of the Memorial Park. “Is the grave in the Greek Orthodox section of the Memorial Park?” I asked. “Yes, the internment space is in the older Greek section of our Memorial Park.” We drove through some lovely shaded areas of the park and came upon tomb stones written partially in Greek. “These tomb stones remind me of ones that are found in Greek villages.” I said. “Oh yes the memorial tablets are lovely aren’t they?” he replied. The coach and the procession of cars finally arrived at the designated internment space. “Our Trisagion service will take no longer than 10 minutes. I
hope the coach can take me back to the cathedral before the body is lowered into the internment space.” I told him. “Please Father, the family wishes to witness the lowering of the remains into the internment space.” As funny and ludicrous as the above account of a “politically correct” funeral seems, the essential facts involved in this story are true. This is the secular death–denying culture we live in. As T.S. Eliot observed, “Humankind cannot stand very much reality.” We fear death when we feel that we haven’t lived yet. We’re frightened that death will come like a thief in the night before we’ve really had a chance to live. We do everything we can to make death look like life. We use the art of cosmetics to make the body look living. With P.C. words we avoid the hard but descriptive words. We make our burial places look better than most city parks. But all this reality numbing vocabulary still seems to no avail for the matter is much deeper than that. For the more we fully live, the easier it is to let go… to die. Monastics are taught to have death at all times before their eyes. Remembering death does not mean being preoccupied with death. It means that you are preoccupied with life and experience all the gifts that God has given us in every moment. To acknowledge that each day comes to a close, and that each life comes to a close is to hear the challenge to rise to the occasion and make something of this day…this life. It is against the distortions of reality that our Orthodox Christian faith emerges with such maturity as reflected in the letter of St. Paul to the Romans: “I am persuaded that neither life nor death can separate us from the love of God.” That is faith which lifts us into a total affirmation. It requires no denial. It is not life as over against death, nor death as over against life, as though one were the enemy of the other. They both make up the human experience and must be understood together. As the God illumined St. John Chrysostom proclaimed in his Pascal sermon, “Let no one fear death, for the savior’s death has set us free; He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. O death, where is your sting? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown… Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead is become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be the glory and dormition unto the ages of ages.” Amen.
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Fr. Bakas is dean of St. Sophia Cathedral, Los Angeles and a faculty member of Loyola Marymount University, School of Theology.
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