Eulogy for my grandfather, David Crawford

Delivered at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Stevens Point, Wisconsin

August 13th, 2018

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope.

We must read what St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians very carefully. Is St. Paul saying that Christians should not be sad at the death of another Christian? Is he saying that our supernatural hope that those who have fallen asleep in Christ will rise like Him, should cancel out our natural tears?

I think that St. Paul understood human nature better than that; if we read more closely we see that we ought not to sorrow in the manner of those who have no hope. So even if we're confident of a life after death, even if we're sure of the joys of heaven, we sorrow nevertheless, and rightly, because we're human, and because our beloved who have been taken from us, however temporarily, are precisely that, beloved to us.

But the question then remains: how does our sorrow differ, as Christians who have hope, at the death of our grandfather, our father, our brother, our brother-in-law, our friend and fellow faithful church-goer, our husband? I think that Grandpa Crawford—that's who he was to me, and so that's how I'll refer to him—had a notion. 

When he came home from the hospital the Sunday before last, I was blessed to visit together with my wife Rosemary and our five young boys. Grandpa's bed was set up in the living room where his recliner ordinarily would be. He was lucid and at peace, finishing up a visit with my brother Jamie and his wife Nikki. Of all things, he was overjoyed to be eating a Jimmy John's sub after the liquid diet restrictions of his last hospital stay. After I spent some time talking with Grandpa, I finally brought in my family. All the boys ranged round Great-Grandpa Crawford's bedside, their faces somber, their gazes downturned.

Propped up in the bed, Grandpa looked at them hesitantly and then said hoarsely, “Smile, smile!” Ever the skeptics, the boys weren't convinced. We had told them that their Great-Grandpa was dying, and kids naturally know that death pierces the mysterious veil between the here and the hereafter and is therefore a solemn thing. But Grandpa wanted it, and so I tickled the baby and got him to laugh, and suddenly there were sheepish smiles all around, the widest, perhaps, being on Grandpa's own tired face. Then boys began to be boys and to push and shove a little, just as it is reported that we Klein boys did once upon a time in that very living room. I remember being counseled more than once not to knock down Grandma and Grandpa's immaculately decorated Christmas tree, nor to disturb the countless bunnies and other more fragile, carefully placed knick-knacks.

We Klein grandchildren never fight anymore, of course. In adulthood, we've all turned out to be perfect angels. Smile, smile. Even in the midst of your tears, you can smile.

But then there are the words of the Preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem, which Grandpa himself chose for this funeral, and which must therefore be touched upon. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Like with St. Paul, the well known opening phrase from the Book of Ecclesiastes needs to be read very carefully. Is Qoheleth, the Preacher, saying that all the memories that my siblings and I have of our grandfather, all the things that we did with him, all the things we made with him and treasure and hold dear, the things that cause us to smile even in the midst of our tears— are all these things vain, and empty? Well, no; of course they're not. But then how are we to understand Qoheleth and his vanity of vanities?

I hope that I'm not stealing my brother Jamie's fire if he decides to speak, but a few days ago he told me that the olfactory sense—that is, our sense of smell—is more closely linked to memory than the other senses, and that his strongest memory of Grandpa Crawford is the smell of fresh-cut wood.

That came as no surprise to me. I don't know how many hours my younger siblings and I spent down in Grandpa's basement workshop turning his scrapwood into swords and guns and other weapons. That's what boys make, but I think I remember Johanna and Gabrielle joining Stephen, Jamie, Oliver and me down there before I aged out of those activities. It may have been years ago, but I can still smell the sweet sawdust from working with the bandsaw under Grandpa's careful eye. Equally, I can smell the smokey-sweet scent of burning firewood from our many camping trips—Copper Falls, Rock Island at the very tip of Door County's peninsula, the Badlands of South Dakota and Yellowstone National Park together with Oliver before my senior year of high school. Others of my siblings ventured to the Grand Canyon or rafting on the Colorado River.

These memories were not, are not, and never will be, in vain, whether they're based on the olfactory sense alone or all five senses working in concert. That word vanity, or vain, at its root means empty. The point is, the memories would indeed be vain if all they were were experiences for the sake of experience that would pass away with the one who experienced them. But these are memories because they're filled full to the brim with our Grandfather, who, with Grandma, helped to make our childhood the adventure that it was.

The vanities of this world—the wooden swords and other toys created in Grandpa's workshop under his watchful eye, even the many paintings and sculptures which he so laboriously and carefully created and the countless photographs he took and meticulously catalogued, even the wonders of God's own creation like the geysers of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon in all its majesty which we gazed upon for the first time in his company—are vanities because they will all pass away, rot, decay, crumble into dust. With Grandpa's death there will be no more grilled cheese sandwiches, no more bisquik pancakes on the griddle, no more camping trips. These things have passed away. Even Desmet's townhall, which looked so solid and permanent when Grandpa built it for us twenty years ago, is now showing its age.

But the memories Grandpa made with us in these places and doing these things are not empty because they are filled with Grandpa. They are not the principalities or creatures—creatures being an old fashioned way of saying created things—that St. Paul writes about in his Letter to the Romans: impermanent created things that have the potential to distract us from thinking about ultimate things, particularly the hereafter. These memories are instead firm links in a chain that binds to Grandpa, who has pierced the veil into the hereafter. They have the potential to inspire us with the hope that St. Paul writes about to the Thessalonians: that someday we will grab hold of that chain and, using St. Paul's language, be caught together with him into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, to be ever with the Lord, and with all those whom we loved during our short earthly time with them.

Although I, for one, have learned from Grandpa about what it means to be a father and a husband, maybe even someday a grandfather, I'm not here to canonize him. But Grandpa was the Lord's faithful servant. In my last conversation with him on Sunday, he said that his biggest hope for the funeral was that the entire family would be gathered in church to pray together. And here we are: Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, all of us seekers, all of us praying together because Grandpa Crawford wanted it.

My favorite image of God comes from the poet Francis Thompson, for years an opium addict very far from being a perfect servant of the Lord. In one poem Thompson describes how he fled Lord, whom he calls the “Hound of Heaven,” 

 “down the nights and down the days;
...down the arches of the years;
...down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears.” 

Throughout the poem, the Lord gradually takes vain, earthly things way from Thompson because

they prevented him from recognizing that the Lord is all that really matters. I'm thinking about how the Lord gradually took things from Grandpa as well: His failing health and his inability to travel frustrated him. Remarkably, the Lord never took away his artistic abilities. In my last visit, I marveled at the output of his last weeks and even days, at the painting he did for Grandma for their 64^th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago because he couldn't leave the house to buy her a card, at the beautiful painting displayed here in the sanctuary, which my mother finished for him under his careful watch.

And at the end of Thompson's poem, the Lord had taken from him all earthly things. But when all was seemingly lost for ever, all his abilities, all the things and the people he had loved in life, the Lord turned to him with these words: 

“All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”

For his part, Grandpa Crawford has risen and clasped the Lord's hand and gone home with Him. Pray God that each of us, linked by that sturdy chain of our memories of him and of everybody whom we love who has gone before us, may someday also be caught up into the clouds. Until then, smile. Even in the midst of your tears, smile.