Forest Park Lawndale. Houston, Texas, September 22, 2012.
Saturday afternoon, September 22, 2012, at the beautiful Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston’s East End, an unpretentiously simple pine box casket carried you away for one last short but memorable ride ahead of us following walkers who attended your funeral on a typically hot and humid first official day of autumn.
The pine box rested securely on the open back of a blackened 19th century mortuary carriage, one driven and attended by two men dressed in black clothing and also wearing black fedora hats – and they were all pulled by a mighty white horse of transcendent visually physical size and power.
Before you went into the ground, the priest would say a few more words and offer a few more prayers before presenting your mother with a memorial crucifix; a two-man delegation from the Texas Army would present your beloved wife with a memorial American flag; your loving mother would offer a goodbye song in Gaelic; a larger delegation of the Texas Army would then offer a cannon and rifle-fire farewell; and then we went “home,” leaving your pine box carriage and bodily remains in the final resting place that shall be their more discernibly still physical ground from here until the end of time.
An armed salute to Larry Joe Miggins was carried by fellow members of the Texas Army at gravesite on September 22, 2012.
Everything about your funeral speaks volumes for how you lived and how you embraced death as simply another transition in the flow of life. You departed in a pine box, in a state of chosen humility that was true to your bones and wisdom about the journey of life through here – and from here – to eternity. You rode one final time on a blackened byre that symbolizes nothing less than our shared vulnerability to the kinds of physical conclusions that impose themselves in one or another, eventually, upon us all, and you are escorted and joined on this journey by all those who have ever spent time both guiding your journey – as the men in the carriage did yesterday – or walking in your path – as the rest of us did, en masse, on a sunny September Saturday afternoon.
The great white horse is the spiritual deliverer of the soul to another realm of God’s Universe. He shines with the brightness of hope, and he parades with all the pull and power of God for deliverance to a bigger, better realm. He is available to all who believe and who are present for the deliverance of a loved one, as we all saw of him yesterday – and then – when the job is done – he just seems to slip quickly and quietly out of our sight again.
Did anyone else notice? Once we reached the graveside yesterday, and the body of Larry Joseph Miggins had been lifted by his brothers to its final resting spot, the great white horse that led us all there – just suddenly seemed to vanish from sight.
I sure noticed. I missed the opportunity for one more admiring glance at the great white horse, but I was also immediately comforted by the thought that we shall each see him again, someday, in one fine form or another, when it is our time to make the same crossing that you tried to teach us more about yesterday.
God truly is Love. Only a Loving God would have placed someone like you to mingle among us for as long as you were here. Thank you for being our friend. And thank you for making life for all of us a little easier – and a whole lot more fun
Transcendance.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
September 23, 2012 at 12:45 pm |
All Honor to his name!
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