Funeral Observances on August 19

We had two services for our mother: one at the cemetery for family only, based on a Jewish service with some Christian modifications; and the other at the Herzstein Memorial Museum in Clayton, New Mexico, officiated over by Pastor Terrel Jones.

My Dad and his service dog Cheyenne, my brother Bob and his wife Diana, my sister Charlotte and her daughters Elizabeth and Alexandra, plus Elizabeth's husband Jeremiah and Alexandra's son Jem, Rebecca and her children Arthur and Brianna, my father's stepmother Bess, and my son Evan and I attended the service at the cemetery. Both Michael Hass the funeral director, and Terrel Jones the minister had offered to come help out, but my father had particularly wanted a private family service, so I declined both offers.

I've omitted the texts of most of the psalms from the order of service, because you can easily find those elsewhere, but the following is very much what we did on the Sunday morning of the 19th. I had originally intended to have indivduals read different psalms, but Charlotte suggested we might prefer to do them in groups rather than alone, which proved to be an excellent thought. Any time one of us faltered, another of us could carry on.

Funeral Service for Ruth Marie Peffley Isaacs
Processional
to the Grave
Grandsons Arthur and Evan carry the urn to the
grave.

Psalm 91
(King James Version read
by Daughters:
Jeannette, Charlotte & Rebecca)

1: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2: I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.
3: Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
4: He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
5: Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6: Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
7: A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
8: Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
9: Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
10: There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11: For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
12: They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
13: Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
14: Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
15: He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
16: With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.


Graveside

Keria
(all who wish to)

Praised be thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who is a Righteous Judge.

Near relatives each tear a black ribbon symbolic of rending their garments.


Psalm 90
God's Eternity and
Man's
Transitoriness
(read by Children: Bob, Jeannette, Charlotte &
Rebecca)


The casket is lowered into the grave. Jeannette pours dirt collected at Palo Duro Canyon in Texas on the casket, then mourners take turns filling in the grave, oldest to youngest, using the back of the shovel. Rather than pass the shovel – and their sorrow – from one person to
another, the shovel is laid face down on the ground between mourners.


As mourners fill the grave with earth, all recite the following verse three times,
First: at the sprinkling of the Texas dirt

Second: at the last ritual shovel-load of earth
Third: as the grave is filled (Evan, Arthur and Great-grandson Jem complete the filling)

He, being compassionate, pardons iniquity, and does not destroy; time and again He turns
away His anger, and does not arouse all His wrath.

Tziduk Hadin

Once the grave is completely filled with earth and the top is in the shape of a small mound,
Granddaughter Brianna places a spray of lilies on it. The prayer of "Tziduk Hadin" is then recited.
(read by husband Robert Wolfe & son Robert Philip)

The Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice; a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, righteous and just is He. Righteous are You, Lord, to bring death and to restore life, for in Your hands are entrusted all spirits. Far be it from You to erase our memory. Look towards us with mercy, for Yours, O Lord, are mercy and forgiveness. The soul of every living creature is in Your hand, righteousness fills Your right and left hand. Have mercy on the remnant of the
flock under Your hand, and say to the angel of death, ‘Hold back your hand!' You are great in counsel and mighty in action, Your eyes are watching all the ways of man, to
give man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken. May the Name of the Lord be blessed.

Psalm 16
(read by Children)


Prayer for the soul of the Departed
(read by all)
O God, full of compassion, Who dwells on high, grant true rest upon the wings of the Divine Presence, in the exalted spheres of the holy and pure, who shine as the resplendence of the firmament, to the soul of Ruth daughter of Irvin who has gone to her heavenly world; may her
place of rest be in the Garden of Eden. Therefore, may the All-Merciful One shelter her with the cover of His wings forever, and bind her soul in the bond of life. The Lord is her heritage; may she rest in her resting-place in peace; and let us say: Amen.

Psalm 23
(read by Grandchildren)

The Lord’s Prayer
(Christian Kaddish)
(recited by all –hold hands in a circle around the grave)

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory for ever. Amen.

Washing the Hands

All those who attended the funeral must wash their hands ritually, once outside the cemetery area.* Take a large cup of water in the left hand, pour it over the entire right hand, covering up to the wrist. Take the cup in the right hand, and pour it over the entire left hand, covering up to the wrist. Repeat two additional times. It is customary to place the cup upside down after washing, and not to dry one's hands with a towel or paper, so that the memory of the deceased
lingers.

*This being New Mexico, we did not want to waste the water, so we instead washed our hands over the iris plants on the graves of Martha Stubbs Isaacs, Robert Phillip Isaacs and Lucinda Stubbs.

***
Jem really enjoyed getting to particpate in digging in the dirt, and since there was no reason for him to stop until the hole was filled, we let him keep going. I had Evan and Arthur step in to help and suggested that they could use the proper side of the shovel to complete the ceremony. It was unusual to have people dressed in their Sunday best digging in the dirt, but I had arranged to have the grave dug for us, and filling in wasn't so difficult.

After lunch and a brief rest, we went on to the Herzstein Museum. This had seemed an ideal location for a memorial service for our mother since it had once been a Methodist church. Everything had already been set up when we arrived except for the music, which Rebecca provided using new speakers she had bought at the local (and soon to be defunct) local Radio Shack with one of her kids' laptop computers concealed in the lectern.

Terrel Jones, who had given Uncle Mac's memorial, offered a prayer, and after reading the obituary, turned the service over to the family.

I had prepared a eulogy, and after Brianna played a short selection from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which was one of Mother's favorites, I read it. Here is the text:

My Mother
(Jeannette)

Mother was a feminist before the term became common. She wasn’t a burn-your-bra, who-needs-men militant – she believed in a close-knit family, and until she lost so much weight she didn’t need one, she wasn’t about to dispense with a bra. All of her children benefited from her attitudes about the intellectual equality of the sexes: two of her daughters became engineers, and the third felt quite comfortable with the term “webmaster”… though she did admit that “web goddess” was an acceptable alternative. Mother’s only son also never thought in terms of “women’s work” or “men’s work.” He became skilled at garment construction in his college theater costume shop, and in fact made his wife’s bridesmaid’s dress for our youngest sister’s wedding.

For her own part, Mother had originally intended to become a doctor. Love, marriage and the needs of a young family caused her plans to change, and ten years after graduation from high school, she graduated from Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in education. She sometimes called that her greatest accomplishment – finishing college in spite of having three children, the oldest of whom was not yet six.

The medical profession’s loss was a gain for the thousand or so students who passed through her classroom. Mother taught elementary school in Lancaster, California for some thirty years, for which she garnered numerous awards. She also won accolades from her students, and in later years, she taught more than one child of a former student. She had a particular gift for reaching difficult children, and she was almost always assigned the remedial reading groups because she was so good at helping them learn. Under her instruction, students who started out years behind often made two or three years’ improvement in a single year.

Mother had a strong belief in honesty and fair play, and she passed these values on to her children. More than once, I have astonished a clerk by returning excess change, or in one case, going back to the store to give back an item I hadn’t paid for. We all believe in obeying the law, even when we don’t think anybody is looking. In spite of learning to drive in California, we make full, rock-back stops at stop signs – no “California stops” for my mother’s children.
She and Daddy put us all through college. They made it clear they would not make us go, but the expectation was there, and we all went. And we all got our bachelor’s degrees. Mother was never lavish with praise, but I think she was very proud, not only of us who earned our degrees, but for herself and my daddy who gave us the encouragement and support we needed to accomplish this.

After we had all gotten married and started our own families, our parents got serious about going to muzzle loading rendezvous as well as promoting the sport. The two of them shared the duties of Southern California rep to the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association: my dad would do the schmoozing, and my mother would take care of the organization and correspondence. She also served as secretary for the Western States Muzzle Loading Association for a couple of years and even wrote a few newsletter articles. Mostly, though, she ran The Store – the R.W. Isaacs Hardware Outpost – at Rendezvous. She kept track of inventory, ordered and sold items of interest to black powder and living history enthusiasts while my dad was out on the range shooting. She enjoyed sitting in their Revolutionary War-style Marquee tent while people came to her to visit and buy. She especially liked the educational rendezvous, which were held near enough to towns that the local school children could come on a field day. She showed them locks, stocks and barrels, plus all the loading accouterments; tomahawks; finished rifles and shotguns; flint and steel; trade silver and beads – many of the trade goods important to the original fur trappers’ rendezvous. And then she sold them flint arrowheads, glass marbles or deer-horn whistles.

Daddy may not believe this, particularly when she called him a “blue monkey” (her euphemism for dirty dog) in the latter stages of her illness, but Mother was devoted to him. When we were still living at home, we would blame as much as we could on our dad because we knew she would forgive him. “Who ate the last banana?” “Daddy must have done it.” “Who left this bowl here?” “It looks like one of Daddy’s.” (Even if it had Sugar Crunch cereal residue in it.) Now I realize she probably knew what we were up to, but she let us think we were getting away with something at the time.

My parents celebrated their fifty-sixth anniversary last January. Mother always expected Daddy to die first – which he did, actually, but between CPR and the miracle of modern defibrillator technology, he didn’t stay dead. However, she believed that she would not long survive him if he did go before her. I think her love for him, and his for her, kept her alive for some time after all the signs pointed toward an imminent end. He sat at her bedside nearly all day every day, and even when she gave no indication she knew he was there, she hung on for him. She knew he depended on her, and she didn’t want to leave him uncared for and unworried about.

After I finished, Charlotte stood up to speak. She had left her notes in her hotel, but I can't imagine a more moving summing up. I'm starting to tear up even as I think about it. This, copied from her blog, is what she said:

You may never have noticed, but we never actually called our mom "Mom." She was Mama or Mommy when we were little, and later we graduated to calling her "Mother." I never made the leap, though. I always called her "Mommy."

One of my greatest memories is how she would always worry about us.I know when I drove down to visit, she expected me to call when I left so she'd know when to expect me.

Invariably when I'd arrive, she'd say, "You can't possibly be here this soon!"

Soon, I learned to call her twenty to thirty minutes before actually leaving, saying something like, "We're just about ready to hit the road." I was trying to compensation a bit for my lead foot, and I really was telling the truth!

In spite of all that, I still very often would hear, "You can't possibly be here this soon!"

And now, what I want to say to my mother is ... "You can't possibly be here this soon."

Not surprisingly, neither Bob nor Rebecca could speak after that, so Terrel Jones gave the eulogy. I haven't scanned the text of his eulogy yet, but I will; it was lovely. He made good use of the memorial album I lent him and honored our mother very well.

Rebecca and her children closed by playing the recording of a beautiful hymn "On Eagle's Wings" by Michael Joncas.

You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord,

Who abide in His shadow for life,

Say to the Lord,

"My Refuge,My Rock in Whom I trust."

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

The snare of the fowler will never capture you,

And famine will bring you no fear;

Under His Wings your refuge,

His faithfulness your shield.

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

You need not fear the terror of the night,

Nor the arrow that flies by day,

Though thousands fall about you,

Near you it shall not come.

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

For to His angels He's given a command,

To guard you in all of your ways,

Upon their hands they will bear you up,

Lest you dash your foot against a stone.

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun,

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

And hold you in the palm of His Hand.

Compare this with Psalm 91, with which we began our service in the morning, and you will see that we essentially completed a circle.