Funeral or Homegoing Celebration? A Tribute to Reba Nauman

Yesterday (Dec. 27, 2011) I attended the funeral of ninety-two-year-old Reba Nauman, who slipped into Heaven peacefully on Christmas Eve, after Alzheimer's Disease had rendered her silent for six months.

It's strange to think of Mrs. Nauman being quiet. I call to mind a feisty small-frame-of-a-woman not afraid to speak her mind. Like the time I was washing her dishes by hand, an ignorant newlywed accustomed to an automatic dishwasher. She walked by and saw that the suds had long turned to grease and floating food particles, and snapped, "Change that dishwater!" To this day, I hear Reba's voice echo over cold, dirty water draining in my sink.

I learned other things during my stays at the Nauman farm all those years ago. I understood that a forty-dollar bottle of fresh honey could cure varicose veins, and that a sharp pinch on the Achilles tendon diagnosed pockets in the colon. I learned not to waste things; spilled corn meal should be swept up and fed to the birds outside. One should never ride on the back of a three-wheel ATV on an incline. And a steaming hot bath is good for a bruised tail bone.

The most important lesson I learned though, was about blood relation. You see, I was a teenager traveling over a thousand miles from home, and having been raised far from my own grandparents. The Naumans offered me a place in their lives even though I wasn't their blood-relative. At least, not in the sense of natural genetics. But because of their belief in the unifying work of the Cross, God's spilled blood was enough to make me feel every bit a part of the family during those brief visits to the farm.

Even sitting there among friends and strangers yesterday, it felt like a grand family reunion. I can only imagine what Heaven will be.

That's why Reba's funeral was more of a celebration of a life well-lived in love for people. I'd felt it, I'd been one of countless blessed recipients. Like the neighbor kids she and Dan had packed into their car along with their own ten children to take to church every Sunday. The grandchildren she'd sewn clothes for. The others, like me, she'd offered the warmth of a home-away-from-home.

And like the kids she taught in Sunday School. Until the end, she was still found "teaching" them, alone in the bathroom, her ninety-year-old mind warped with disease. Her son-in-law would find her in there, hairbrush wagging in the air at invisible students. "Have you memorized your verses?" she'd say with enthusiasm.

I wonder if having Alzheimers is much like being intoxicated with drink when it comes to voicing what thoughts are otherwise hidden in the heart. Like the time when Reba told her son-in-law, "In the name of Jesus, shut up!"

Daughter gently but firmly corrected her. "Mother, we don't say 'shut up' in this house. Furthermore, that is my husband you just spoke to so disrespectfully."

"That's your husband?" Reba said. "Then you're in trouble!"

Such stories filled the church with laughter yesterday. But there were also tears of gratitude for those who laid down their lives to care for a woman who no longer recognized them. Teens giving up their space, wives sacrificing time to read pages aloud, grown men lovingly showering wrinkled skin through soaked Sunday clothes.

Now she is home. Reba is home! Yesterday was not another funeral. It was a joyous acknowledgement of--not something we merely  believe, hope to be true, or wish for--but the realization, the knowing beyond a shadow of doubt, that she is more alive than ever--mind whole. Soul and spirit finally, fully alive in God's love. One day her withered body will rise, glorified perfect, to offer eternal worship to the One who exchanged His life for the one she now freely lives.