This Is Not about What You Must Do
In this book I deliberately paint a broad canvas. The areas covered range from a theological basis of bereavement through a consideration of secular celebrations, to pastoral care and onward through services and their component parts, to meditations. I make no claims of covering the whole territory. If you want a complete treatise on pastoral care for before and after bereavement, there are books that cover this aspect. If you want to find out in detail about childhood grief, there are books and articles out there. If you want to obtain a comprehensive set of liturgies for funerals and celebrations of life, you can do it. And if you want to specialize in secular celebrations, there are excellent handbooks for this area alone.
A Good Ending arose from my pastoral experience as a minister, called on many occasions to be with dying persons and their families, to conduct services for members of my pastoral charges, and to conduct many more for individuals who had little or no Christian faith.
It is the sort of book I would dearly liked to have had at the beginning of my ministry. So it is primarily for those who are beginning in Christian ministry, both lay or in one of the ordered streams of ministry. It is also for those who are facing the death of a well-loved family member and want insights about what is going on, how the death of their loved one might be celebrated, and how they might seek help if the grieving process is not going well.
This is not a handbook about what you must do or what you should say to a dying person or their family members; rather, I hope it will help you find your own path and your own words. The same goes for the service, memorial, or celebration. There are many examples of prayers and meditations that you may wish to use exactly as they are printed here, or you may want to revise and modify them to meet the different situations that you encounter.
I hope this book will challenge you to think about the meaning of death and what happens after a person dies; and I hope it opens you up to concepts and ideas that are new and surprising. I also hope that the book will encourage you to work out your own pastoral practice around dying and death and to write your own prayers and meditations. If you say, “I have a prayer that is much more appropriate in this situation than the one in the book,” or “The prayer on page 48 has given me an idea that I am able to develop on my own,” I will be very happy! You are at liberty to use any of the material printed here for your pastoral situation. However, if you wish to reprint poems and passages for which copyright permission has had to be sought for the purposes of this book, I refer you to those copyright sources at the end of each chapter. If you want to republish portions of this book in another book or article, you will have to seek permission from the United Church Publishing House.
A note about names: Since many of my stories are based on true events and experiences, I have changed all names and some situations to ensure the privacy of individuals.
And a note about language: It is my practice in liturgy and in meditations that the language should be inclusive of male and female genders in spite of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures being full of male references and pronouns. In this book I have mostly avoided the awkward “he/she” way of indicating personal pronouns and attempted to balance the number of she’s with he’s. If I have failed, and you the reader will be the judge, I ask your forgiveness, but my aim was equality of gender reference.
You only have one opportunity to celebrate and mourn the end of a person’s life, and each opportunity is unique and challenging. May you find as you are compassionately with a dying person and their family, as you prepare and offer the celebration or service, and as you work with the grieving family afterwards, that the Holy One is with you.
David Sparks