3 Funerals

I started 2019 standing on a pile of freshly excavated dirt.  Men and women standing in somber concentric circles around the open door in the ground. The coffin ready to be lowered.  The grieving family members holding each other and being supported by relatives and friends and neighbours.

Neele Aasman ke par jayenge, mera Yeshu rehta wahan...  the combined voices of the gathered crowd soared into the foggy sky on a cold Lalitpur morning.  "I will go above the blue skies - where my Jesus lives"...  I had the privilege of being asked to pray near the end of the short service at the graveside.   Shortly afterwards the coffin carrying Mr. R.A. Paul, a local Christian leader whose funeral we were gathered for, was let down in to the welcoming earth.  "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" said the presiding minister.  "We commit this body into the care of the Lord till the resurrection" he concluded, taking up a fist full of earth and throwing it on the coffin 5 feet down. 

We took our handfulls and added more dirt to cover the coffin.  Then young men took shovels and filled up the grave.  Closing the chapter of this man's life, ending a portion of his family's journey.

A few days earlier, Mr. Paul had been celebrating Christmas with his family.  Just before New Year's a young man on a rashly driven motorcycle knocked him down.  Mr. Paul suffered a brain haemorrhage.  He was rushed to hospital in Jhansi, and then taken to Gwalior for surgery.  But he did not survive.  We buried him on the first Saturday of the new year, with 2019 only 5 days old.

Even a the funeral, I couldn't help replaying in my mind the hopeless wails of the women at a village funeral that I attended 8 months earlier.  Couldn't help heart still echo with the terrible cries of one of our young support staff members who suddenly lost her husband in a traffic accident 2 months ago. This funeral in the cold of winter was one where through the tears there shone hope.  Everyone was sad.  People were standing in solidarity to the family and comforting the immediate members.  There was real sorrow.  But the words of Scripture rung through: "the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed."

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A few days earlier we heard that our dear Dr. Symon (Cy) Satow had been called home to his beloved Jesus - 90 years after he was born in 1928.   

It was my deep privilege to be welcomed into the Satow family during my first year of boarding school.  As a shy 11th grader, this family was a life-line to me.  Their love for me continued through my college years in the US and beyond.

The beautiful smile that so often creased Dr. Satow's face remains etched in my memory (I could just never called him by his first name).  How I wish I had the privilege of working with him.  But at least I got a bit of it vicariously, being thrilled to hear him share some of his experiences as a missionary doctor on lazy Saturday mornings with mugs of tea in hand.  

Dr. Satow's gentle, irenic conversation, his deep wisdom and love for people, the joy he had in his children and colleagues shine bright as the memories of him and the sparky Mrs. Satow bubble up.  

I have a small pet theory:  everyone needs a second set of parents. 

The wonderful parents that God gave as our own flesh-and-blood-ones are such a blessing.  But we also need to drink deep of the air of another family too.  To see a different world, to plunge into other depths.   Such were the Satows to me.  A fresh faith of a different flavour to my childhood one.  A world of medical service which we had not experienced (other than using 'Where there is no doctor' for our own home-treatments).  New lands of what conversations can be.  The Satows introduced me to a bracing sabre-fight of repartee around the table quite different from what could be rather staid (though full of love) conversations that we had growing up as Eichers.  The gentle one-on-one conversatoins with Dr. Satow and Mrs. Satow also probed my sometimes brash statements of faith (many of which were actually just parroted from what I heard growing up - not having been discovered myself).  And of course I drunk in the many stories that flowed from a life-time of service in rural India that the Satows were living out.

And so when on the last day of 2018, I got the first news of Dr. Satow's death the day before, I felt a small sharp twisted knot of pain somewhere ''within" me.  My eyes misted and I took a deep sigh and just thanked the Lord.  If there ever was a "life well lived" is it is Dr. Satow's.  A proof of the divine, this side of eternity.  "Well done, good and faithful servant." 

Truly his children - both his biological and spiritual legacy will rise and call him blessed.  A life lived with no regrets.  I was not able to be at Dr. Satow's funeral - but I will see him at the resurrection!

Dr. Satow and Mrs. Satow and their children and grandchildren at the 90th Birthday celebrations in the summer of 2018.


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A third funeral, this time direct flesh-and-blood. 

Ten years ago we went to Sheba's mother's ancestral village of Lankalakoderu  in West Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh.  The patriach of our family was her brother David - or "David Mama" as we called him.  He was the last surviving brother of Amma, as her other two brothers had already died earlier.

And then Amma  unexpectedly died in October 2017.  We never dreamed she would be called home on the day she was.  But God our good Father had prepared her over the previous year - and knew when to call her peacefully to Himself.  Her death was unexpected to us, but her life had not been 'cut-short' - she lived a full 70 years and then was called home.

Ourselves a decade ago - just after Christmas 2008. 
David Mama is second from left in front.   Sheba's parents are to his left. 

On New Year's Day 2019 we got the news that Uncle David had died the night before.   

He had been worshipping with others in the local Hebron assembly in the village.  As is the practice, everyone in the congregation took turns to pray aloud during the 'Watch-Night Service' - the last worship time of the year.   

David Mama also worshipped aloud, thanking God for 2018 and praising Him for who He is.  And then we had a massive heart attack.  David Mama didn't live to see 2019 in this body.

How much we wish we could see David Mama again.  We know 'that day' will come - and sometimes wish it would hurry up, other times we want the present future to stretch out of a loooong time more...

I deeply appreciate David Mama's deep love for so many.  You could see it from his honest smiling face.  Having lived in North India David Mama could speak Hindi.  This was good for us, as were able to communicate with each other since sadly I do not know any Telegu.  I remember our times together fondly - even though they were too few and far between.   Sheba told me that David Mama had talked about coming to visit us here in Lalitpur.  His prayers back in the ancestral village were directed to this part of the country too. 

The sudden calling home of David Mama while attending the Watchnight service was a real shock.  But again, once the initial bit of sad surprise wore off, I just had to thank the Lord Jesus for His faithful goodness to us in the person of David Mama.

As with Dr. Satow, we were not able to be "present" at David Mama's funeral in the village.  And though that saddens us and makes us wish we could just soar like swans and be in so many more places at once.  But we have Jesus.  He is able to help us through all our sufferings.  A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

It has been our consistent experience to experience hope in Jesus in these times of sorrow.  A funeral does not mean a defeat, does not mean shrinking back from God.   But it does mean that who have run their race for him will not be put to shame.

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3 funerals.  One attended by me in the spirit and flesh, 2 others only in spirit.  But in each one there were clear sparks of joy mingled with the tears.  Sorrow may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning!