The Funeral Sermon

Almost droll in its assault on magisterial, my father’s funeral sermon made me prowl, —agitated—from bean casserole to escarole salad, then taco casserole, and back all afternoon, in thrall to Dad’s every growl, cramped certitude, and corporal wavering lost to shrill sacral cant: The pastoral story was Dad’s own, though, frail as it is: faith and God steamroll death. His wife’s and daughter’s role was to die—a trial of faith, not cruel so much as natural, when the supernatural is, as it was for him, literal. His cloistral withdrawal, according to the minister’s drawl, was grace, and his temporal forfeitures fat collateral on eternity. It felt surreal (can there be a funeral without, now, the word surreal?) to hear Dad’s stoic control and loneliness spiral heavenward on genial praise, real enough for the general, one supposes. An orchestral hymn flared through the stereo’s cloth grill. Cold waves over the deep water roll, we sang, some voices shrill, mine guttural, my brother’s slow as a crawl— our voices one and several, a visceral, not unmagisterial, chorale.