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Reflections on Pat's Funeral & Burial
Friday 25 Nov 2011 Dear Bill and friends
We arrived back in Poole in the early hours this morning, and
have prepared rather hastily a short summary of yesterday's
remarkable events.
I've attached several files, which I hope don't make this email
too big for you to broadcast to the 'network'. If the
attachments make it too bulky to broadcast successfully, you'll
just have to remove some of them. There are Word .doc files with
the orders of service for the funeral and graveside services, a
compilation of edited tributes, and the words to Patricia's song
(which we played from the CD you sent her which we eventually
discovered in her room). Very few people will know this, so if
there is some way to add that as an .mp3 or whatever ... but
I'll leave that to you.
There is also a compilation of the tributes we have received. You'll appreciate from the size of the tributes file that it
proved impossible to execute our initial plan of reading out
tributes from her many friends during the funeral. How could we
read one, and not read them all? Nor could we see a way in the
very short time we had how to edit the longer ones to fit within
the service time frame. This email network may actually prove a
better way of sharing them with each other.
Jodi took two pictures in the Chapel, also attached. One shows
the wreath we ordered on behalf of all Pat's Celebration and
Redeemer friends. The other shows father Benoit censing the
coffin. I was also intending to transcribe my handwritten
homily/tribute to a Word document, but in our rush to get to the
airport I left that script behind in the Chapel. It may have
been spotted by one of the Sisters. I will contact them to find
out; and if it comes to light in due course, I could send you
that as well.
Jodi, Elaine and I had lunch in a small Greek Orthodox café on
Wednesday, discussing some of the arrangements for Patricia's
funeral the following morning. We had spent time earlier in the
day sorting out Fisherfolk music to use in the mass, and finding
out what the three who were coming from St Georges to help us
already knew. We also moved the keyboard to St Louis Hospital in
our hire car. I still cannot work out either how we squeezed it
in, nor how we managed to get it out again! We met a Ugandan RC
priest named Adam Civu. He decided to come to Pat's funeral, and
you can see him as a co-celebrant in the photo, along with a
Scottish priest named Peter from Ardrossan on the Ayrshire
coast! Roman Catholics are so good at including everyone who
turns up! Elaine decided to walk to Mount Zion to discover
exactly where the cemetery was
in advance. She found that Oskar Schindler is buried there, not
far from Patricia's tomb.
Patricia's coffin was already in the Chapel when we arrived,
with four candlesticks set at the corners burning tall candles.
It was a wooden casket, with a simple wooden cross on the lid,
on top of which was a large wreath of white flowers we had asked
for on behalf of Celebration and Redeemer friends. We asked for
a single yellow rose to be included to mark the Texan
connection. The florists must not have had any yellow roses, so
they substituted an Israeli sunflower! We rehearsed as much of
the music as there was time for with the three singers from St
George's (Graham and Sherry Smith, and Heather ...), and sang
parts of the mass to a mix of Betty's settings (the choice
determined by the very limited musical scores we had managed to
obtain). I played on a keyboard borrowed from St George's, and
had to improvise for several of the items
where we had no notes to follow. The opening Taize introit
"Jesus, remember me" and the closing "Fear not for I have
redeemed you" (as arranged and played by Patricia) worked
best, since several of the congregation knew these well. Alas,
our rendition of most of the other music (unknown to all but a
few) would probably have made Patricia
wince, but we felt we needed to do our best to reflect the rich
Redeemer heritage to which Patricia is such a well-remembered
contributor, and it was offered to the Lord from full hearts.
For me the high point of the service was listening to Pat sing
"Close the back door, Baby". Several of us were in tears
throughout this offertory song. It was taken from a home-made
cassette from the 1980s, so the sound quality was poor, but the
clarity of Pat's voice, her heartfelt conviction in singing so
simply her own story, and her flawless jazz rhythm accompaniment
made it a magic offering. The Sisters were amazed - they had no
idea she was a gifted singer!
After the Taizé introit, father Benoit led the service. He is a
Frenchman, with very little English, so he read the service
slowly with a heavy French accent. This gave it all a curious
solemnity. For the final prayer of commendation (which I don't
think he had ever read in English before) he dropped into his
native French, and there was a refreshing fluency and musicality
to that final prayer. One of the Sisters read a moving prayer of
St Augustine's near the beginning, and Elaine and Jodi read the
Old and New Testament scriptures, and father Benoit the gospel,
taken from Luke 10, describing Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary's
home. I took this scripture as the theme of the homily and
tribute to Patricia.
We felt the pain of the divisions in the church (and in
Jerusalem) during communion, as the non-Catholics received a
blessing, but not the sacrament.
At the close of the service the funeral cortège made its way
through the busy Jerusalem traffic to the hillside cemetery of
Mount Zion. The graves are not excavated from the rocky soil,
but built in tiers, rather like giant pigeon holes one above the
other. Each 'pigeon hole' provides an enclosure for one coffin. Again father Benoit led the short ceremony, Graham Smith singing
the entire Magnificat with confidence and great beauty. The
coffin was lifted and made to slide into its resting place, with
flowers placed just inside the opening, and we all stood and
watched as Arab bricklayers closed the opening and rendered it
with cement mortar. The wreath with the single yellow flower was
fitted over the new tomb, where a memorial stone will be
supplied in due course. Patricia's grave is just above Sister Emmi's grave (whose funeral had taken place the previous day). All the mourners then returned to St Louis Hospital where the
Sisters had laid on refreshments.
Jodi and I drove off, anxious to get to the airport in Tel Aviv
in time for our flight back to the UK. How amazing that our
trip, planned many months earlier, should have coincided with
those final days of Pat's pilgrimage, and even given us time to
take part in her funeral. Elaine and Sister Valerie had washed
her body, and dressed her frail frame in clothes the Sisters had
supplied (a white blouse and a blue denim skirt). We later
learned from Dave that the blue skirt was one that Jane Porter
had made and given to Patricia. So much about the day had such
little touches, coincidences that no one had organised, but you
knew it was the Lord, and no doubt Pat was smiling at the
outcome, from an altogether new vantage point. After several
days of rain, we stood under a sunny November sky, with no need
of umbrellas to distract from the simple beauty of an outdoor
farewell ceremony for Patricia.
This is the last of our updates. We see that Bob Andrew has
opened a new section on the Celebrate the Whole of it website
for further reflections on Patricia's lasting impact on a
generation of her brothers and sisters. Some have asked if her
funeral service was recorded, but it was not.
With love, Howard
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