My poor brother-in-law! I can’t tell you why, but he received no funeral, no burial, and there’s no obituary in the paper. So I wish to provide what little I can by way of a salute. I wish I could give him a New Zealand haka, like the one in the video above. Ray was a college professor. It would have blown his mind, to be honored by his students in a way like this.
Anyway, he was my friend. And a lot of fun to be around. He’d come over for the weekend, and he and Patty and I would laugh ourselves dizzy, playing Mad Libs or just cracking jokes. I’ll miss him. I already miss him. He and I played an awful lot of chess together.
He was ill and, in effect, lost to us for I don’t know how many years. Five? He was still able to carry on a coherent phone conversation back in September, but we soon afterward lost that, too.
He may be remembered for his two books about the Jersey Devil. Those were labors of love, and I freely recommend them.
Ray, old boy, you didn’t get a funeral, but you are not forgotten, nor will you be. You deserved a haka. But by now you will have already been welcomed by Our Lord Jesus Christ into His everlasting Kingdom–where, behold, He makes all things new.
2 Cor. 5:1-8
1 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:
3 If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.
4 For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
5 Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.
6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
You and Patty and your family remain in my prayers.
Thanks, Linda. That’s the very passage I selected for Aunt Joan’s funeral.
Take comfort and peace in knowing these things He has promised us.
Every death is a huge, tragic loss. Even the least of us are important to someone, somewhere. I recently lost a good friend and had this point driven home, yet once more. Our hope lies with our Creator, and He is not going to forget any of us.
Was Ray a veteran? If so, an honor guard could have been requested, My 90 year old friend who died recently and was a vet is having a grave site service at the Nat’l Cemetery tomorrow.
The Navy gave my father a good send-off, but Ray never served, and that’s all I’m free to say about the non-arrangements.
Sorry to hear there won’t be a funeral