I shall not want

I felt honored when mom told me that I was chosen to do a reading at Aunt Gay’s funeral today. Great, I thought, I wrote a nice eulogy in my blog. Then my Aunt Lulie handed me a bible, opened to the page I’d be reading. Oh, THAT kind of reading.

I have nothing against the bible. My mom was raised Catholic, and most of her siblings continued to attend church every Sunday, celebrating all their children’s, and grandchildren’s first communions. My mom, however, rejected the teachings of the nuns at Sacred Heart when she fled to Berkeley in the summer of ’69, to later have a baby out of wedlock (me), and then marry a Jew (my dad). Go mom.

I was raised with parts of both religions (mainly the cheery, celebratory parts) and while I consider myself half-Catholic-half-Jewish (a growing world religion), it’s safe to say that I have never read more than a page or two out of the Torah nor the New Testament. While I don’t want to get too deep into my beliefs on God and the like (a little too personal for the blog), it’s safe to say that I’m not a very religious person, at least, not in the traditional, organized sense. So the thought of me standing at the front of a church proclaiming to over a hundred Catholics that the “Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” made me a little nervous.

Last night I couldn’t sleep – I was having anxiety dreams about reading at the funeral. I had a nightmare that I got Tourettes and started yelling out swear words in front of all my Catholic relatives mid-prayer. I often handle my own sadness with humor, and I didn’t trust myself to not make some sort of totally inappropriate joke at the funeral before diving into the bible reading. I even debated asking my Aunt Lulie, the Catholic nun, if it would be okay if I substituted “He/She” into the prayer when it referred to God (like we do with my dad’s family when reading from the Haggadah on Passover) but I decided against it.

My heart started beating quickly while my cousin, Annie did a reading before me, something about John and the Corinthians. Then it was my turn, and as I walked up to the podium, I realized that this reading, this whole event, had nothing to do with me and my beliefs. It wasn’t about God, it wasn’t about religion. It was about my Aunt Gay. It was about her safe passage to the heaven that she believed in. While the words felt foreign and strange coming out of my mouth, I knew that it was what my Aunt Gay spent 79 years believing. And for that reason, I read them out loudly, powerfully and with absolute clarity and faith.

No matter what I believe, I know that Aunt Gay was somewhere watching me today, and I hope that I made her proud. For today, her religion is my religion. And I thank God, in all His/Her glory, for that. Amen.