Many times in our shared life together, Claudia and I would off-handedly use the biblical call and response we learned early in our Sunday School childhoods.
This is the day the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
On glorious mornings while visiting another country — Great Britain, Mexico, Jamaica, Guatemala, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France — or while enjoying the beauty of the seashore in Maine or North Carolina or Virginia or South Carolina or Florida — we might echo those words together.
On days not so glorious — the court hearing for one of our momentarily wayward adolescents or en route to a morning radiation treatment to quell cancer cells or visiting her dying another — we would speak the words, quietly, soberly, questioningly.
Claudia was more apt to trust Love’s good work in difficult days, while my fragile emotions were more likely to murmur, “This day? What’s so good about this day?”
Today is a hard day. It marks with the most finality in more than five months the separation death has created between my wife of nearly twenty-nine years and me. Claudia was a committed and supportive spouse, but she was more than that. She was a mother who never gave up on her children, she was a faithful friend who was always available, she was (by her own reckoning) a non-traditional “clergy spouse” who often worried her personality might get me in trouble. She was a leader and colleague in the child welfare space who lived her passion with integrity and authenticity. She was, as she often reminded me, tongue in cheek, “a very big deal.”
But most of all she understood herself to be God’s child, a follower Jesus until her very last seconds of conscious awareness. She was, literally, in mid-text mode with companions in her spiritual journey when her brain collapsed, rendering her unable to communicate any further with those she loved.
In the mystery of all things Love, at some point following her brain collapse, an emergency surgery which produced no results and the ensuing days in ICU, her soul slipped away from us into Love’s warm embrace.
In a few hours we will remember in a service of public worship, the life and times of Claudia Mae (Flye) Fletcher. By my calculations she lived a total of 22,474 days — not nearly enough — with each of those days suffused with Love’s blessing and goodness.
And today, with those who gather with me and my family, I will — in the midst of my sorrow and devastation — choose to live with gratitude knowing that this is the day the Lord has made.
And one day, not too far into the future, I will once again rejoice and be glad in it.
God of all Love, let your Spirit bring strength and comfort for Bart, his children and grandchildren, and all who mourn with him this day. Surround them with your love that is beyond our understanding. Bless all who are leading the service. We thank you, Lord, for the life of Claudia who blessed so many people, especially children, in her work and homelife. Thank you for the gift of your presence in this time of mourning. Bless them, keep them, and shine the light of your love on all who gather today. I ask this in the name of your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Beautiful. Thanks for making the time and space to write this post this morning. Yes, this is the day that the lord has made and I am so privileged to be a part of it with you, your family, your friends, and and your congregation.