Really, we have to stop this business.
Yesterday, we had a funeral at our church for the son of one of our members. Tony had moved away, but his mum wanted him buried here, and so we did. Since we no longer have a rector, a former priest was called in, at the family’s request. Fr. Al has become very frail in the last six years, and it was painful to watch, but he soldiered on, and seemed to enjoy visiting old friends.
Today, we came home after service, grabbed some lunch and then galloped off to the memorial service for an old friend. Fr. Eads was a close friend of my dad’s, and the priest who baptized The Squire and then married the two of us. He was 82, and had retired in 1989, after serving Christ Church for forty years. An entire generation at the same church, and many of his former parishioners were in attendance.
I got a chuckle from the acolyte. When the service was over, she extinguished the candles, and then pulled out the skirt of her cassock, put one foot behind her, and dropped a curtsey at the altar.
My dad had always wanted to be a priest, and had joined the Navy when he was a young man, as they had promised to send him to seminary to be a chaplain. When WWII broke out, they needed him for other things, and by then he was married to my Lutheran-by-Gum mother, and although he was very active in the church, he never made it to seminary. It was Fr. Eads, the rector at Christ Church, who convinced him he could finally realize his dreams and set Daddy on the road to Sewanee. He was one of our favorite people. And I know my dad was glad to see him.
thisendoftheswamp 
Leave a Reply