Right now, the smell of Easter Lilies makes me squirm. What once was such a welcomed fragrance turns my stomach over in memory of this time last year. I realized today, in a flood of grief-like fog, that Dad’s funeral was right at this time a year ago. No, not the actual date, but we had a hard time finding a church for the service because it was Holy Week. Churches are pretty booked in anticipation of the death of Christ. Not many openings for the death of a common man.

With Holy Week comes Easter Lilies. Beautiful flowers emitting a once-a -year scent. Those damn flowers are telling me to run the other way through grocery stores. So many people gave us beautiful lilies last year, but the timing of the gifts tainted my opinion of the blooms. I used to love those elegant flowers. This year, please keep the flowers and their symbolism away.

I wonder this if new revulsion may be similar to pregnancy – tastes and fragrances that once brought comfort are instead instantly turned into something else as we get ready to give birth to something new.

The metaphor is weak, I suppose, but I just keep thinking about how sometimes things we once loved change when you lose a loved one. And how maybe, just maybe, that process is ok. How through death I am being birthed into a new me. I am shedding skin of pre-death and even this first layer of post-death, like a snake, dropping layers and layers of unnecessary preferences. What remains is fresh skin. Raw skin that is a little bit sensitive to the light and indicators of time passing – like frickin’ seasonal Easter Lilies.

As I sat in church this weekend, I kept thinking about the comfort provided by the traditions of Holy Week. My dad was a minister when I was little and my parents used to hold huge Easter brunches in our backyard. Much of his congregation would attend. I remember matching dresses and egg hunts and little hats. I remember palms handed out on Palm Sunday and solemn trips to the Stations of the Cross – the crown of thorns, the smell of vinegar, nailing my sins scrawled on a notecard to a wooden cross. These experiences were so connected to who my dad was in his various roles at the church. They set the foundation for me to explore my own faith.

It has been eighteen years since my dad was in direct ministry, well nineteen now I suppose. As I approach another Holy Week, I find myself clinging to the memories of Dad in the church. Of his excitement as he passed out palms to the kids, the ceremonial seriousness he projected as he instructed the crowd to break bread in remembrance of Jesus. Have you noticed how on Good Friday, right around 2 or 3 pm, it always gets cloudy and dark? Dad would always point this out – the very real reminder that God still feels in his giving of his only son for us on the cross.

I also remember how last year my beautiful friend brought us a ham for Easter dinner, three short days after a funeral. I will never forget how that hunk of meat became a symbol of sustenance, hope, resurrection for our family in its newest, most raw and vulnerable form.

Thanks for hanging with me here – I’m not sure my thoughts are entirely connected. What I can say is there is beauty in the foundation of faith, in the way my father taught me to live through the history and truth of the Holy Week. Beauty in anticipating the death of Christ and the hope in his resurrection. Beauty in taking communion, in yelling “HE IS RISEN INDEED”, and in dwelling in the truth of Christ’s love for me. Beauty in remembering what brought you to this point and beauty in looking forward. Beauty in basking in the power of the cross.

Here – now you can yell it in Greek – just like Dad used to do.

May Jesus meet you in unexpected ways this week.