God's Transforming Grace (From May 1)

This morning, we celebrated a funeral service for Dottie Wessell. Dottie donated the statue of St Francis here at Christ Church in memory of her son, who died when he was 30 after being infected with rabies when working in Africa. Dottie hadn’t been in regular attendance here for some time, but I met her 2 years ago when I was visiting someone at the former Waltham hospital, where she’d volunteered for 35 years. We exchanged greetings that day, but I only got a chance to start getting to know her in the last few months, as she was dying.

I always find funerals to be so moving (whether I knew the person or not) because there is a sameness in the way we all remember each other. Our grief almost becomes a sacrament of our love for the person we’ve lost—an outward sign of an invisible grace. This morning at her funeral, we heard several eulogies, people choking back tears remembering her. They spoke of her love for her children, and laughed as they remembered how she’d been stubborn and strong-willed, and not a little set in her ways.

The most moving remembrance, though, wasn’t given by her niece, or her daughter. It was given by a man whom she’d come to know only in the last few years of her life. Dan worked at Waltham hospital, and he and Dottie got to know each other. He was half her age, but they struck up an incredible and deep friendship. One day, Dottie showed Dan a picture of her son, Kevin, who had died. The similarity was eerie. Dottie told me that she felt that God had sent Dan to her, to be another son to her, since she had lost her beloved Kevin. As he spoke to the congregation this morning, Dan talked about how Dottie had wanted to see the magnolia blooming one last time. She didn’t make it out of bed to see, but he took pictures of her garden and showed them to her. Dan shared these positive memories, but he also told a story of a harder time. Dan is gay, and he spoke of how afraid he was of telling her. I think everyone in the church cried as he told the story of taking her out to dinner and mojitos, laughing as he tried to convince this 78 year old dyed in the wool Irish woman to try a Cuban cocktail. “She was always worried about what people would think—did she like younger men, or did I like older women!?” He said that when he told he was gay, she exclaimed, “Why would such a thing happen to such a wonderful young man?!”

Whatever prejudice Dottie had grown up with, she loved Dan, and so she came to love Dan’s partner, Mario, and love the life they built together. She came to see that being gay wasn’t a tragedy that befell him, but just part of who he was. He was still the same person who called her on the phone and could talk for hours. He was still the same person she’d come to love. When I went to visit Dottie, she showed me a framed picture of Dan and Mario and said that she hoped she’d be able to attend their wedding next fall.

Dottie will miss their wedding, but it is sure that she lives on in them, in that unconditional love she showed. I do believe that God sent her Dan to be a comfort in her lonely last days, but it wasn’t just comfort—it was transformation. It was the Holy Spirit, whirling in through each of their lives, bringing them life and joy. The Holy Spirit never leaves us the way we were—we are always transformed nearer and nearer into the image of God in which we were all created.

The preacher at the funeral this morning was the Rev. Marya DeCarlen, Dan and Mario’s priest from their church in Groveland. She talked about how at a time like this, our grief is a sacrament of our love for the person who has died—it is an outward sign of the invisible, inward grace of that relationship. We mourn because we love. Our sadness can be as much a gift as the ways we enjoyed each other in life. The Eucharist wasn’t the only way we knew God this morning. In hearing the story of Dan and Dottie’s unlikely friendship, we were all invited into the live-giving grace of God’s transforming love. Pray that we may each be as open to that grace as she was.