Bin Laden's Bald Spot: & Other Stories

Waking the Bishop

69 waking the Bishop The late bishop was an enormous man and it took ten men to carry his coffin. Among the men were two nephews, big strapping fellows like their uncle, and a Buddhist monk the bishop had befriended in the latter years of his career. The monk was a slight man and had to hold up his corner of the coffin with both hands. The nephews were up front and the monk was at the rear with the diocesan communications director, also a slight man. The other six men, representing various aspects of the bishop’s life and ministry, were ranged along either side of the coffin , but as the communications director said darkly to the monk afterwards, It wasn’t like those six fellas in the middle were doing a whole hell of a lot of work if you know what I mean. The monk smiled but said nothing. To get the bishop from the hearse up to the burial site at the top of the hill took major muscle, and none of the pallbearers spoke during the climb. When they reached the crest of the hill they set him down, their shoulders crackling with the strain, and stood silent for a moment waiting for the rest of the burial party to ascend. The monk noticed that the nephews’ suit jackets were dark with sweat. The big fella always did like the long view, said the communications director companionably. 70 | Bin Laden’s Bald Spot It is a good place to rest, said the monk. The rest of the burial party straggled up the hill and ranged themselves around the coffin and the auxiliary bishop led them in prayer and then spoke briefly of the bishop’s endless capacity for kindness and humor, his personal warmth and grace, his admirable simplicity of style and consistent clarity of purpose, and his mindfulness at all times of Christ’s insistence on love as the rudder by which we steer the flawed vessels of ourselves down the tumultuous and confusing river of life. His metaphor license is expired, whispered the communications director. Lowering the coffin into the hole took some doing, but two cemetery workers had come up to help, and they silently cleared away the ropes and planks once the bishop was properly in place. People tossed lilies of various colors onto the coffin—the late bishop had dearly loved lilies—and the auxiliary bishop tossed down a handful of dirt, saying, in his singsong way, And God formed ye of the dust of the ground, and breathed into thy nostrils the breath of life, and so ye became a living soul, and now ye return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. Kind of a free translation of King James, eh? whispered the communications director as the two cemetery men stepped up with shovels and began to quietly cover the bishop. The monk noticed that the men leaned down into the hole with their loads of dirt and slid the soil gently onto the coffin so the clods and pebbles didn’t rattle against the wood, and when they were done, and there was a mound of fresh redolent soil over the bishop, one of the men knelt and smoothed the mound with his hands. Because the bishop had died on Holy Thursday he had not been formally waked, the events of Holy Week taking precedence, and the auxiliary bishop had decided that a big funeral at the cathedral on the Tuesday after Easter would cover the necessary public bases, which it had, and then some. The communications director had estimated two thousand people in the cathedral proper, five thousand or so lining the road from the cathedral to the cemetery, and Brian Doyle | 71 untold thousands watching on live television in homes, schools, and offices. The television negotiations, as he told the monk, had been surprisingly smooth; even the secular media understood the bishop’s unique stature in the city, and for the first time in the communication director’s career he had been able to play one request for exclusive access to diocesan officials against another for the greater good of the diocesan coffers. In the flurry of events there had also been no time to read the bishop’s will, so the diocesan chancellor arranged for the interested parties and...