Church Hymns Make Me Cry
I recently lost a friend of mine. She was described by her friends as a bubbly spirit who always told you exactly what was on her mind (no filter, but then she’d apologize and say: I shouldn’t have said that…sorry but that’s the way it is). We loved her. This is the poem I wrote after attending her funeral. Sara, you will be missed.
Church Hymns Make Me Cry: a poem
— for Sara Fegley —
I hadn’t been to a service in months,
and usually I use the side door,
but today I used the main doors that
lead into the sanctuary. I imagined
Pastor Randy saying, So someone
had to die to get you back here, huh
in his joking banter, but he was already
in front and my friend was waiting
just inside. When I walked up to
your body in the casket, I said to you
in my head, That isn’t you, that isn’t
you, that isn’t you anymore. I couldn’t
sing along to your processional, The Old
Rugged Cross, because every time I try
to sing a church hymn, it makes me cry.
Not only in funerals, but regular services,
too, and I don’t know why. Perhaps it
is from all the memories stacked up
on themselves. It’s like when I was raking
the leaves; one leaf doesn’t weigh
very much — one memory doesn’t cause
much emotion. But try to move a whole
yard full of last autumn’s leaves in mid-spring,
they get heavy, they start breaking down
and spreading all over, leaving their dust
over everything.
Maybe its that way with memories, too,
and those old hymns just rake up
the dust. Anyway, I can’t sing them or
I end up crying. I used to sing so well,
now my voice has lowered and cracks
and is out of practice; I have to sing
an octave lower with the tenors;
it just doesn’t sound the same, doesn’t
have the same ring, doesn’t float above
the rafters in harmony like it used to.
Sometimes it’s just so hard to say
goodbye.
5–2–23
Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold
