Pop 89: I Hear A Melody

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

Tuesday witnessed another funeral in our little community. This time we said goodbye to someone far too young. Melody Laturnus had, on top of other ailments and challenges, an aggressive form of cancer, and despite her good nature and perseverance, she died at the age of fifty.

I met Melody through her parents, Casper and Theresa, residents of Val Marie and loyal parishioners at our Nativity of the Virgin Mary church before it closed due to a dwindling congregation. Casper rang the bell every Sunday morning, and Theresa was our sacristan, preparing the altar and cleaning the sacristy, the room off the altar where we kept all the sacramentals - the candles, cloths, holy water, wine and vestments. (In secular language, the sacristy would be something like the change room and the offstage.)

I was born into the Catholic tradition and so have inherited a respect, if not a veneration, for the movements and gestures of the mass. While all that bowing, kneeling, reciting psalms, blessings, and communal confessing might seem irrelevant to some, I value them as part of my spiritual life as others might value practising the two-step or line dancing as part of their social life. Knowing her faith was a large part of Melody’s character, it was fitting she asked for a funeral mass. I found it sad, however, that so many people groaned they would have to sit through a mass.

Melody always seemed to find ways to put herself in the pathway of her God. Hers was a child-like sense of a parental God who looked after her, smiled down on her. And, despite her many challenges and struggles, she carried a faith far greater than my own. A faith that belied an understanding of The Beyond I’ve never been able to master. She believed that when she died, she would be returned to her parents, whom she deeply missed.

I don’t know how many of us present at her funeral mass felt the same way or believed in the same God or God’s abilities. The range of responses and energies in the hall covered the gamut, from bored-looking, gum-chewing faces to reverent bowed heads. I wondered if those of us with our moments of skepticism might suspend our cynicism long enough to benefit from Melody’s faith and thereby be open to a humble shift in disposition. I suppose for that to happen, we’d have to desire such a shift. But, if you ask me, churches exclude the skeptics among us when they use exclusive-members-club language like “You must believe in order to be saved.” Even words like: “You have to be open to be changed,” are more along Jesus’ lines?

Melody was open to all kinds of people, and she told every one of us that she loved us. For a while, after her mom died, I would make a point of taking her to Humpty’s for their two-for-one steak night every time I was in Swift Current. She would play her new favourite melody on her phone, usually a Christian rock band. Then she’d ask me if I was going to eat my rice pudding. I assumed she wanted it, but she took it to her dad, who had a hard time chewing and who loved rice pudding.

She texted me just a few weeks before her death to ask how my dad was, and she didn’t mention her own declining health. She seemed to know who needed cheering up and when they needed it, and I believe that included our experience of her own funeral.

Deacon Dave set the tone with a brief introduction before the mass that began with a welcome to all present and an invitation to join in to the degree they felt comfortable.

Maybe you’re here because you knew and loved Melody as we did, he said. Or perhaps you knew her parents. Or perhaps you’re here because that is the way things are done in prairie villages. Or maybe you’re here because there’ll be a lunch afterwards.

Then he turned our attention to “the dash” - the space between January 9, 1972, and June 25, 2022, the dates of Melody’s physical birth and death. A service is a place where we have the opportunity to witness what happens in “the dash.” For some reason, my mind went to the time-check on CBC radio: “The beginning of the long dash ….” A funeral is a time-check for all of us, and if we’re lucky, we get a long dash before we reach the end. But let’s not make it a mad dash, I tell myself, because it’s always over too soon, partly because we are always in a hurry.

I was asked to read from Ecclesiastes, that classic scripture about seasons and cycles. “There’s an appointed time for everything … a time to be born, and a time to die … a time to weep and a time to laugh … a time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast away; a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to speak and a time to be silent …. You can’t add anything to it or take anything away from it. Whatever happens, or can happen, has already happened before.”

When I was younger, I resisted those words. Now they bring a certain reassurance and understanding that there is a rhyme and reason to the universe. This time I noted how Ecclesiastes resonates with indigenous spirituality: Life is not about climbing a ladder to ultimate success as much as it is about honouring the cycle of existence, played like a melody with choruses and refrains. We come, and we go, we make errors, we make amends, we move through seasons of growth and decay. Can we show up for it all? Can we learn a thing or two about what is sacred and needs to be treasured and cherished, the way Melody did?