What does it say about a newly minted widow who wants to dance at her husband’s Celebration of Life? Because that was me.
I could say I don’t care what people say, but that’s not true. At the end of Randy’s Celebration of Life, the music video, The Great Adventure by Stephen Curtis Chapman began to play on the big screen at the front of the church, just as I requested. All I wanted to do was get up and dance.
I thought to myself: what will people think? And I figured they’d think it was just too weird and probably inappropriate for a woman whose husband died less than a month before to dance. So I just sat there. Chair dancing. Which did, in fact, feel a lot weird.
Randy and I loved the song, The Great Adventure. It was released in 1992, a couple of years before he retired from the Air Force. We knew that retirement was coming fast, the years were starting to seem to fly by then. Looking back on all that we’d done, and looking forward to what might be ahead, we adopted that song as the anthem for our life together. We were living the great adventure.
That’s why I chose to end the gathering of friends and family to honor his life with that song. As I said in last week’s post, the adventure didn’t end for me when Randy moved to heaven. In a more profound way, the adventure morphed and is just beginning for me.
That’s what made it so hard for me to not get up and dance.
Then (miraculously, in my mind) our 5-year-old great-niece, Addie, bounced over to me and started dancing to this incredibly upbeat song. Think about that! God sent an angel in the form of a 5-year-old child to show me that it is absolutely appropriate to dance at that moment, and to invite me to join in. After all, this whole event was a celebration.
When my mom’s twin brother died about 25 years ago, we attended his funeral. It was a somber event. Waiting for the tardy minister, the family told stories about Uncle Eddie, some of which were absolutely hilarious. We all laughed nearly uncontrollably and one of my sisters would try to shush us. It worked for a moment or two until the next Uncle Eddie escapade was remembered and recapped. Finally, tired of being told what to do by his stick-in-the-mud daughter with the overactive “appropriate gene”, my dad reminded us all that the first three letters of funeral are F-U-N.
I like that not too many people have funerals anymore. Randy certainly didn’t want one. Nor do I. We didn’t really talk about having a Celebration of Life for him. It never occurred to us to do anything for him in Missouri. But the idea to celebrate his life at the church he loved so much in Missouri sparked a few days after he died when Lynn (his sister who lives at the Lake of the Ozarks but flew down to be with me for as long as it took) and I were talking about her returning home when it was time for that to happen.
It seemed so perfect, and so right, and so much easier for family and friends to get to Missouri, than for some event to take place for him in Florida. In fact, when I stood up in church to speak to the nearly 100 people who gathered last Wednesday, it really felt like coming home to me. I know Randy would have been pleased.
I’ve heard from several people who blessed us with their presence at Randy’s COL that it was the best one they’d even been at. The best one, they said, in spite of, I suppose…or maybe because of, the fact that I got up and danced at the end. I wanted it to be joyous even though I knew there would be a lot of tears. And I wanted people to remember Randy with joy, not sadness.
I think we accomplished that.
The first thing we did that evening was eat. Those of you who knew Randy know how much he loved to feed people. The good people of the church provided sides, dessert, and drinks. Randy’s youngest brother, Mark, arranged for brisket, pulled chicken, and wings to be catered. I made 10 lbs. of sloppy joes. No one went hungry, which is exactly how Randy would have wanted it.
We started the “program” praising God’s goodness by singing How Great Thou Art together. The worship leaders at that church, Chris and Jennifer Libby, are amazing musicians. Randy always thought Jennifer has one of the best female voices he’d ever heard and I’m sure he was singing right along with us from his heavenly perch.
Then his good buddy, Sandall (his nickname for her) Gumm, sang a song called This One’s With Me, personalizing it by changing it from the first person in which it was written, to the third person. That song told the story of how I imagined Randy’s arrival at the gates of heaven. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.
There was a time of sharing Randy stories. I appreciated every person who got up and said really nice things about him. His high school friend, Mark Berg, got up and talked about Whirlwind (the singing group we were in early in our marriage) singing Why Do Fools Fall in Love at our wedding while Randy and I walked out of church. There were enough members of the original group there, that on the spur of the moment, along with a couple of proxy members, I felt compelled to encourage us to recreate that song. No one questioned me. They looked pained for a moment but got up and started singing. And dang, for not having sung together for years, we shocked ourselves and everyone else by sounding pretty darn good. But more importantly, it was a lot of F.U.N. I think everyone there enjoyed the spontaneity and joy of it.
Pastor Jerry O’Dell, one of Randy’s dearest friends, wrapped up the celebration by sharing some thoughts about him. The gathering sang It Is Well With My Soul together, and we ended the celebration with that wonderful Great Adventure video. My heart was just bursting with joy and gratitude when it was over.
I was proud. Randy Grathen was worth celebrating.
And because Mark’s wife, Kim Martin Berg, a professional photo- and videographer, recorded the whole thing, you’ll be able to watch it back (if you’re interested) as soon as I post it to my YouTube channel. What a gift that is.
P.S. I’ll be on the road back to Florida when this blog is normally published next week. We’ll see if I’m inspired to post. Please keep me in your prayers for safe travel.
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