Please Bury Me in Virginia

So often I reduce my relationships to concepts. I think about who is "bad company corrupting good morals," or which of my friends are that "cord of three strands not easily broken." My relationships with all kinds of people--old, young, male, female, new friends, old friends, family, and enemies--I reduce them to a concept. I see people as "accountability partners" or "stumbling blocks" or "mentors" or "needy people that need my ministering." (Yes, I know that is extremely arrogant) I forget about the true connection of souls. I want to stop analyzing the relationship and I want to relate. I want to quit categorizing people and start hugging more.

As I was thinking about all this the other day, I started daydreaming about my funeral. (I must confess, all of you are crying real hard and everybody is dying to share how I touched your life. It's just a daydream...let me have my moment.) In all seriousness, though, if I were allowed to look down at my funeral, I hope I see my wife and children holding each other peacefully. I would like to see, kneeling in front of my wife, one of my old Bible college friends praying for them. Then, however, seated next to my wife, I hope there is a prostitute who could honestly say that I talked to her with respect. On the opposite side of my family is a homeless man with his arm around my children very grandfatherly and all. Maybe there are a few cops at the back of the room with a prisoner in chains. Then scattered amongst the homeless and poor and wretched are the business men, the school teachers, the stay at home moms, the construction workers, firefighters, college students whose lives were in some way affected by mine when they were just children. I hope while the minister is speaking a few of my dearest friends start getting that panicky feeling you get in Church when you aren't suppose to laugh but you just have to. I hope Charlie is drawing funny pictures for Jacob to look at, and Jacob is crying a little bit (partly because Charlie is making him laugh, partly because I died, and partly because he watched Cool Runnings right before the funeral.)

I want the lines between the respectable and beautiful to be blurred between the shamed and ugly. I want those that I met weeks before my funeral to feel as close to me as my childhood friends.

I want to connect with you, my friend. I want to go to your funeral knowing that I offered you everything. I want you to come to mine knowing that you were loved during my lifetime.