Memorial Service for Andrea Douglas
Tucson, AZ
October 5, 1996
This past week, sorrow like a mighty wave passed over us. Most of us reacted to Andrea’s death with questions – Why? Why at this time? Why now? What a loss! And so we are left with unanswered questions – or as Unammo, the Spanish writer, said: “All grief comes back to one thing – we’ve run out of time.” There is so much we might have said; so much we might have done. But now we gather here, as a family, with a choice. A choice to ask why and to wallow in loss and curse the darkness, or another option: To celebrate a life. To give thanks for all that Andrea meant to us. Her love of riding, her enthusiasm, her love of people. Andrea, that wonderful childlike person who loved life,
When a parent dies, as did your grandmother, a while ago, they take with them a large measure of the past. But when someone like Andrea dies, they take away the future as well. That’s what makes “the dark at the end of the tunnel” so incredibly difficult. But we gather together to affirm that death is not the end. We gather to say that we know that Andrea continues. She rides on – in God’s kingdom.
It does no good to deny the tragedy we feel. There’s no way to go around it, to put is aside, to forget. Our loss is very real, but not permanent, for this we know. There is no ultimate sundering – only an interruption. Peter Marshall said to his wife as he was dying, “I’ll see you in the morning.” That’s precisely what we are affirming. He was on target. We will be separated but not severed. We have run out of time but not out of relationships. As Scriptures put it “The light shines in the darkness – but the darkness has not overcome it.”
There are things that we know in our hearts that must be said today. Chief among those is that God’s love is much greater than we can imagine. And God’s mercy is much greater than our sinfulness. So, it is with a thankful heart that we can commend Andrea to God. For we know that love is stronger than the abyss of death. And nothing will separate us from the love of God.
Yes, we would have changed things if we could. But as the A. A. prayer says- it so well: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.”
And so we gather this morning.
In a sure and certain belief – that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God and that never ends. And God gathers in the fragments of life, and places them in a great mosaic. So that nothing is lost – nothing is wasted.
For if love is immortal
And life is eternal
A death is only a horizon
And a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
The good news we celebrate today is that Andrea is at peace. She is with the Lord, and God doesn’t lose anything_. For whether we live or whether we die – we are the Lord’s
Amen