‘Dear Grandpa Berry, I am sorry we never got to meet in person, that feels like a big loss to me. I am sad that you came to the conclusion that the world would be better off without you and that no one cared about you. We, your grand children are here to tell you we care and that you life mattered and we created this ceremony to honor your memory and give you a proper burial.”
This is part two in my series about my grandfather. The first blog in the series is https://magneticbusinesswoman.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/it-is-never-too-late-to-have-a-funeral/ in case you didn’t read it. It is important that you read it so you understand how this story begins.
The Funeral
My siblings and I had all agreed we wanted to purchase a headstone and have a proper funeral for my grandfather and had gone to the cemetery where he was buried to order a headstone. I remember saying ” we want to have the funeral before the snow comes”, and the woman agreeing. About 5 or 6 weeks later I got an email from my brother Jim saying that they had forgotten to order it. Who forgets to order a headstone? Is this just another reinforcement for my grandfathers sense that his life had no value? Time to turn that around!
My brother did some research and found out that grandpa had veterans benefits, which would include burial at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, because he was honorably discharged from the service and wondered what we all thought about moving him. Wow, we have gone from a pauper’s grave, to being buried with honors in a very short period of time. We all agreed to move him.
So today,Oct 25th at 12:15, 76 years after he died we had the funeral. It was raining and snowing, windy and cold, unlike the day before when it was almost 70 and nice. It was the kind of weather they put in movie funerals to make it even more dreary and melancholy. The perfect backdrop for a long over due funeral.
We went in a car procession to a sheltered area where my grandfather’s vault, holding what ever was left of him after all the years, was waiting for us. The family huddled together, some of us under umbrella’s and we did a long over due ceremony for a grandfather we never knew.
Our original plan was to buy a headstone and have a little ceremony by his grave site, how we had the attention and pomp and circumstance of a full military guard and he was resting grave side in a new ceremony at a new burial site. His body carried 17 miles from the east side of St. Paul to Fort Snelling in Minneapolis.
The first thing that happened was my brother was presented with a United States flag and a card that came from the military for the years of serve he had given to the country. This was followed my the military guard doing a 21 gun salute, during which we were instructed to cover our ears. I couldn’t help but think of how far this was from the original burial in an unmarked grave that hadn’t been visited for 76 years. Now he was being honored not only by the military but by his grandchildren, great-grand daughter and my mother who would have been his daughter-in-law. My niece, Pam was in the National Guard and came dressed in uniform. It seemed as though he had just died and this was his first funeral.
My brother Jim did a reading from the bible, followed by me doing a reading. I had written a short piece with things that I wanted to say and I was a bit nervous to read it, probably because it wasn’t religious and was more esoteric and personal, and I didn’t know how it would be received. As it turned out everyone said it was good, and that surprised me. My sister read a piece that she wrote and my brother closed with a prayer. The whole process took less than 30 minutes.
My Transformation
I never imagined an event like this happening in my life and now that it has I can share that it transformed me a great deal. First I have to say that much of what has happened over the last 2 months can’t be put into words. There is depth to this transformation that I can only feel and there are no words for it.
Through our exploration of the family tree a lot of skeletons tumbled out of the family closet that we didn’t know about. My family history would make a great novel, that’s all that I can say and as my brother says, ” You can’t make this shit up!”
There were a number of conclusions that I arrived at over the course of this event and how ancestral karma has impacted me, and I will talk about one of them here. I feel that the biggest issue my grandfather must have felt, that would lead him to take his own life, was that the world was somehow better without him and that his life had no value.
I have worked on personal growth, transformation and consciousness for 27 years and continued to wrestle with the issue of value despite all the work I have done. It was something I was conscious of, like a voice in the background, judging and comparing in order to know that I had value or not. Sometimes though the process I would determine that I did have value and sometimes through the process I would determine that I didn’t. It annoyed me that I couldn’t resolve this no matter how conscious I became.
I believe this issue of value was passed down to me from my grandfathers bloodline. We found a thread of suicide running through the family line through researching our history. Understanding that bloodline karma is stored in my cells, helps me understand why it was so difficult to resolve. It also allowed me to be more forgiving with myself for not being able to shift it. It wasn’t something I could change in my thinking because it wasn’t in my thinking, it was in my cellular memory bank.
My struggle with value came up often in relationship to men, and I believe that is what got in my way of having a lasting relationship and why I stopped even looking for one the last 10 years. I feel that the conflict and separation between my brother and I has also held the karma in place. I had a sense over the years that it was a block to relationships and I never thought it would get resolved in this life.
I remember during the first week after we discovered my grandfather I felt like I was imploding on myself. There were a couple of interactions between my siblings and I that pushed that issue right into my face and it was hard to deal with. I also know precisely when I felt the shift and remember asking my inner guidance what was happening. I was told that my karma “had flat-lined”, which I took to mean that it had resolved and dissolved and I had the distinct feeling that it had. It is an interesting concept to think of karma as dying. I feel it was nothing less than divine intervention and a miracle that this has happened.
I see evidence in my life everyday that shows me that my value is no longer an issue and the way that I look at the world is completely different.
Now today at the funeral we have brought my grandfather’s life full circle, laying him to rest with military honors in the same cemetery as my dad and uncle, who are his sons, and my two brothers, who are his grandsons. I hope he feels the value that he had in life, now and can rest in peace.
Not long after we left the cemetery … it stopped raining and snowing…
“I wouldn’t be who I am today without the gifts and challenges you past to me through your bloodline. Discovering your final resting place, your unmarked grave, and learning more about you has brought my brother Dennis and me back together and that is a gift in itself. All of this has impacted me greatly and changed the way I think about things and I am grateful for this. You walked the path you walked so that we could walk ours.”
It is never too late to have a funeral, reconcile karma and make things right in the world again.
Here is the link to my brother Jim’s blog and his perspective on grandpa’s funeral: http://thequestforholiness.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/54/
Katelyn Mariah, Empowering Health 