Yesterday–a rainy, yucky Good Friday in Philly–I laid my mother’s remains to rest. The interment was short and sweet, and intimate–just me, the funeral director, and the gravedigger. I’ve seen scenes like that in movies and soap operas, thinking that they were cliché and unrealistic. It used to make me think that people only get interred on rainy days.
I don’t think that anymore.
I believe now that God uses the weather to smile, frown, and even mourn with us. That’s what He did when His Son died on the cross 2,000 years ago. The sky grew dark the day Jesus died; the earth shook the instant that Jesus gave up the ghost. When my mother’s urn was placed into the ground, I felt that somber sobriety that He must have felt that day. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. It was like putting the period at the end of the sentence. Mom’s body is where it wanted to be, and so is her spirit.
It is finished.
