Consolation Prizes

Sometimes people don't know what to say when they try and comfort a person who has experienced a loss. Over the past month I have been the unwilling recipient of consolation prizes dished out by the bucketful from those eager to express their condolences.

Some strike a tender chord, harmonizing with my sadness. Others strike me angrily, like a 5-year-old banging on a piano.

Some of my least favorites include: “She’s rejoicing with her Lord now”. “She’s making great music in heaven”. “God has taken her home”.

The audacity of help …

For some of the prize-givers, little or no thought is given to how inappropriate or insensitive their remarks may be. Take, for example, my position on religion. It’s quite presumptuous to automatically assume my mother and I shared the same religion, or that I would be comforted by talk of heaven, and Jesus, and God’s plan to pluck people in their prime.

Personally, I lie somewhere in between the grey mix of agnosticism, atheism, and Unitarianism.

Can you imagine me going up to someone at their relative’s funeral and saying, “I’m so sorry to hear about your loss. Hopefully it will be of some comfort to know that your relative was merely a complex biological organism that has stopped functioning and will never exist again.” … or … “I hope it brings you peace to know that your relative is now part of some nondescript comprehensive epistemological existence that cannot be truly named or identified.”

Can you imagine?

The Wednesday after my mom died her school had their regular chapel meeting, only this time they devoted the service to my mom and they invited my family to attend. There were children everywhere- some performed songs, rang handbells, or walked about the sanctuary singing “Butterfly” and flapping their arms. It was all really touching …

… until one of the pastors got up and delivered his message.

“Boys and girls, I know without a doubt, if Mrs. Bruce were here today and she only had one thing she could tell you all … it would be that she loved Jesus and wants you to tell everyone you know about Jesus.”

My jaw hit the floor. My left eyebrow etched itself like a mountain peak jabbing into my forehead. I sat, transfixed in anger, while the pastor went on to further use my mother’s death to promote his personal agenda. He quite literally turned her passing into a springboard to catapult his religious propaganda into the impressionable minds of young children.

Way not cool …. Waaaaaaaaaay not cool.

She never would have said that. Instead, she would have said "I love all you children so much, and I'm really going to miss being your teacher. Keep practicing, be nice to your teachers, and eat a lot of coffee ice cream".

Sadly, none of these non-consoling consolation prizes come with a return receipt for me to exchange them. But, if they did, I know exactly what I would exchange them for- and in abundance:

a hug,
a smile,
a promise of support,
“my thoughts are with you”,
“she was such a kind and caring woman”, and
“when all the sadness passes what will be left are the amazing qualities she had that are still alive in you”.

The last one still makes me cry … these are the prizes that win first place.