Hany's funeral

Last Sunday, a work colleague died of cancer. Today, I attended his funeral, held at the Coptic Orthodox Church of St Mary in Colleyville, Texas – he was originally from Egypt, where Christians are in the minority, and apparently persecuted. I don’t know very much about him – he was a policeman in Egypt, and came to the States essentially as a refugee; he’s worked for American Airlines for at least 6 years, but got worried after the layoffs associated with 9/11, so that he took on a second job managing property, which subsequently burgeoned to the extent that it provided more income than his “day job”; he was married, but relatively recently, and had no children; he was told, last July, that he had six months to live, but insisted on coming to work every day that his visits to the hospital in Houston would allow; he didn’t tell his parents (in Egypt) about his prognosis because they are old and frail; he had an uncle in Seattle; he was mostly easy-going, and usually smiling, except when discussing political issues, when he would become animated, and, sometimes, strident – he had first-hand experience of a society which was not the democracy that we take for granted.

The church was not, as I had imagined, instantly distinguishable from the numerous other churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It was a modern building, with the plasma television screens at either side of the altar looking out of place against the Christian icons that filled the walls, as did the mobile phones just visible underneath the priests’ vestments. The air was clouded with the pungent smell of incense, in spite of the air conditioning; and the atmosphere, reverent, in spite of the priests’ constant back-and-forth between the altar area and the “vestry”.

The service itself was conducted in Arabic, Greek, Latin and English, switching smoothly (though with reason unknown to me) between each. I was unable to follow most of the service, which was largely chanted, sometimes with the musical accompaniment of a lone pair of cymbals, until the Nicene Creed (“We believe in one God the Father Almighty …”), spoken in English, provided an anchor.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and maybe they have a different way of grieving – for us (western Christians), a funeral service provides closure, a path to acceptance, and to moving on. Music is an almost essential component – it moves us to the tears that are an inevitable part of grief; the eulogy is also important – we need to feel uplifted by happy thoughts, happy memories of a life lived to the full. Neither of these are part of (what I assume is) a traditional Coptic funeral service.

After a service that lasted 90 minutes, most of which required the participants to be standing, after an interminable sermon that preached Christianity in spite of the fact that many of the congregation were of a different faith, after minimal mention of anything personal relating to the deceased, I left feeling empty and unfulfilled.

I will always remember Hany walking into the teamroom, his chubby face beaming from ear to ear, happy to be at work, happy to be alive.