When I was preparing to go over to the Bow Valley Chapel, and wondering what people would say about Nevaida (Reis) Harper, my first thought was that an appropriate service for her would be a concert.
Just music.
Music from everyone who had ever been taught by her or loved her or been supported by her. A one-hour concert would have told all, I think. Maybe a two-hour concert. But who has ever had a funeral like that, though for her it would have been appropriate.
There was music at the funeral.
Her children, her in-laws, and her grandchildren sang or played the violin or the piano, concert level performances. This was a funeral for which people should have had to buy tickets. The music was “Amazing Grace”, “Going Home”, “Homeward Bound”, “Savior Redeemer of my Soul”, favourite melodies at times like this.
In the foyer there were pictures of Nevaida, a book to sign.
Andrea and Doug Hudson stood by the door of the chapel, one just inside and one outside the door, shaking people’s hands and thanking them for coming. Doug took both of his hands and held them and said, “These are so cold. Did you walk over? We have to warm these up.”
Andrea said to me, “My memories of you are having you at the front of the chapel, doing music.” That was a warm way of welcoming me to the service.
At 2:30 pm before anyone said a word from the pulpit, Andrea and Kendra (her daughter) Hudson stood at the front and performed “Amazing Grace”, one singing and the other playing the violin, a mellifluous arrangement, haunting with dissonance.
No tremble other than the tremolo in the hand on the violin, and the tones in the voice were sustained, rich and pure.
That is when I knew the audience should have been paying to come to the funeral; alternatively it was the moment when I knew that the performers were paying their final respects to Nevaida.
The music continued like the same vein – quartets, then an octet with male and female voices.
There is a question in my mind as to how mourners can do this. Both sing and grieve at the same time. A chapel is often filled with flowers. In this case the flowers were augmented with musical tones of respect for their mother / mother-in-law / grandmother. A flowering of semi-quavers and half-notes filled the air.
The grand daughters who sang “Homeward Bound” stayed at the pulpit when the last chords of their music had been sung. One said, “And now something that is not on your programme. We have asked our cousins to send us words about grandma so here they are.” And then in a well-rehearsed script they read the emails and peppered them with their own memories, the women moving easily back and forth in front of the microphone. “We don’t want the funeral to go too long,” they said, “but we wanted to say something from the cousins.”
Having a say from the cousins. For some reason I couldn’t get that idea out of my mind. Words about how their grandmother had taught them breath control, taught them to sight read, given them piano lessons, taught them lullabies that they now sing to their babies, taught them to sing songs and change the lyrics to include the little ones listening, taught them to be socially appropriate, and taught them to love eating chocolate. Such a loving interchange between the cousins about their grandmother.
Both Mark Van Bloem and Kevin Palmer who gave the gospel message and the closing remarks respectively, apologized that the funeral was extending in time. I thought to myself, whose voice is it that we are listening to that is telling us what is not an appropriate amount of time for a funeral service. Mormons are accustomed to 3-hour meetings. Movies are regularly 1 1/2 hours. Our new church schedule is two hours. Conferences go all day. When I go to any of the events above, I get up and leave when I need to. I am going to trust that that will be socially appropriate from now on.
At this funeral, I was glued to my seat, sorry when sermons and the music finished. I was also on alert to the person who said from the pulpit, please, everyone stay and eat with us. We have a slide show of Nevaida that will be running.
As old people I knew were leaving, (please read, those my age) I was asking my friends, are you staying. They hadn’t listened as carefully as I had to that announcement, to know that everyone was invited, more entreated … do stay, eat with us and see more pictures of our mother if you wish.
I stayed. I liked listening there, to people tell how and why they knew Nevaida and how and why they loved her.
Arta
Just music.
Music from everyone who had ever been taught by her or loved her or been supported by her. A one-hour concert would have told all, I think. Maybe a two-hour concert. But who has ever had a funeral like that, though for her it would have been appropriate.
There was music at the funeral.
Her children, her in-laws, and her grandchildren sang or played the violin or the piano, concert level performances. This was a funeral for which people should have had to buy tickets. The music was “Amazing Grace”, “Going Home”, “Homeward Bound”, “Savior Redeemer of my Soul”, favourite melodies at times like this.
Andrea and Doug Hudson stood by the door of the chapel, one just inside and one outside the door, shaking people’s hands and thanking them for coming. Doug took both of his hands and held them and said, “These are so cold. Did you walk over? We have to warm these up.”
Andrea said to me, “My memories of you are having you at the front of the chapel, doing music.” That was a warm way of welcoming me to the service.
At 2:30 pm before anyone said a word from the pulpit, Andrea and Kendra (her daughter) Hudson stood at the front and performed “Amazing Grace”, one singing and the other playing the violin, a mellifluous arrangement, haunting with dissonance.
No tremble other than the tremolo in the hand on the violin, and the tones in the voice were sustained, rich and pure.
That is when I knew the audience should have been paying to come to the funeral; alternatively it was the moment when I knew that the performers were paying their final respects to Nevaida.
The music continued like the same vein – quartets, then an octet with male and female voices.
There is a question in my mind as to how mourners can do this. Both sing and grieve at the same time. A chapel is often filled with flowers. In this case the flowers were augmented with musical tones of respect for their mother / mother-in-law / grandmother. A flowering of semi-quavers and half-notes filled the air.
The grand daughters who sang “Homeward Bound” stayed at the pulpit when the last chords of their music had been sung. One said, “And now something that is not on your programme. We have asked our cousins to send us words about grandma so here they are.” And then in a well-rehearsed script they read the emails and peppered them with their own memories, the women moving easily back and forth in front of the microphone. “We don’t want the funeral to go too long,” they said, “but we wanted to say something from the cousins.”
Having a say from the cousins. For some reason I couldn’t get that idea out of my mind. Words about how their grandmother had taught them breath control, taught them to sight read, given them piano lessons, taught them lullabies that they now sing to their babies, taught them to sing songs and change the lyrics to include the little ones listening, taught them to be socially appropriate, and taught them to love eating chocolate. Such a loving interchange between the cousins about their grandmother.
Both Mark Van Bloem and Kevin Palmer who gave the gospel message and the closing remarks respectively, apologized that the funeral was extending in time. I thought to myself, whose voice is it that we are listening to that is telling us what is not an appropriate amount of time for a funeral service. Mormons are accustomed to 3-hour meetings. Movies are regularly 1 1/2 hours. Our new church schedule is two hours. Conferences go all day. When I go to any of the events above, I get up and leave when I need to. I am going to trust that that will be socially appropriate from now on.
At this funeral, I was glued to my seat, sorry when sermons and the music finished. I was also on alert to the person who said from the pulpit, please, everyone stay and eat with us. We have a slide show of Nevaida that will be running.
As old people I knew were leaving, (please read, those my age) I was asking my friends, are you staying. They hadn’t listened as carefully as I had to that announcement, to know that everyone was invited, more entreated … do stay, eat with us and see more pictures of our mother if you wish.
I stayed. I liked listening there, to people tell how and why they knew Nevaida and how and why they loved her.
Arta
One more thing -- in an email to me, Catherine said, "
ReplyDeleteNevaida taught me how to conduct music. Nevaida led the choir when I first got interested in choir singing. And as a young woman I thought that her daughter Andrea was so beautiful.
Didn't Nevaida live around the corner from us for a while? I remember going to her house to practise some kind of musical number.
Strange that we keep these deep memories with us."
You always give the best descriptions of the funerals you attend Arta. Thanks for this.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mary. I think what is going on here is that I just happen to go to really good funerals. Those nieces made it evident that the cousins really loved their grandmother. And a lot of it was around that fact that Nevaida made them do really hard musical work. Just tell me, whose grandmother makes her grandchildren learn to sing and sight read. I can't hardly do that myself. When I was at Rebecca's she was recycling her own sight reading manual from her days in music. I tucked it into my bag and brought it home. But even more than that, I sat down one day and was practising the exercises in it. And that is before I heard that making kids learn to sight read was a way of life for Nevaida.
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