JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

The death of a young person — whether by accident, illness, homicide or suicide — is about the most crushing experience a family can go through.

Patty and I bore witness to another family’s tragedy this week, when we attended the funeral ceremony for 21-year-old Sean Patrick North, a St. Louis University sophomore, who took his own life on April 5.

Sean was the grandson of longtime friends and neighbors of ours, Jim and Mary North. Jim called me with the news over the weekend. It was the second such tragedy the North family has endured, with one of Jim and Mary’s three sons having taken his own life 12 years ago.

Now, their son, Jim North Jr., and his wife Cara have lost one of their three sons.

I am writing about this not to emphasize one family’s terrible fortune, but to amplify the hope and broader perspective that a Catholic priest — the priest who presided at Monday’s funeral — was able to bring to Sean’s tragic death.

First, take a look at Sean’s photo. Here was a young man with good looks, brains, athletic skill, a loving family, a girlfriend and legions of other friends. As a testament to his popularity, the sanctuary at Church of the Nativity, 119th and Mission Road, Leawood, was filled with hundreds of people, including 300 or more young people who had encountered him somewhere in his life’s journey.

You look at this picture, and there is just one question: WHY?

Officiating at the funeral, at what in Catholic terminology is the Mass of Christian Burial, was the Rev. Jerry Arano-Ponce, who is pastor at a church in Bucyrus, KS. Father Jerry formerly was pastor at St. Agnes Church in Roeland Park. It was there, 12 years ago, that he presided at the funeral of our friends’ son.

I had never seen or heard of Father Jerry. He is a native of Mexico, I found out later, and English is his second language. He speaks with an accent and enunciates carefully.

Once he began the eulogy, however, it was clear that not only was he a master of his second language but that we who were on hand were in the presence of oratorical, theological and philosophical greatness.

Father Jerry started by tackling the suicide issue — which, of course, can be very uncomfortable — head on. He said:

As for Sean, I presume no one is unaware that he took his own life. I think we ought to say that out loud so that we can hear it publicly as we try to deal with it.

But let’s not remember Sean by that weak moment he had. Let’s remember him as he truly was: a caring son and brother, grandson, cousin and friend, a smart young man, a gifted swimmer, a fun friend who had a hilarious one-liner for every occasion, cracking everyone up with his sharp wit.

Then he took on the unfathomable question: WHY?

Making sense of Sean’s loss so soon after his untimely death is futile…The answer may never be known in this life. The wisdom that is needed to understand his death is beyond our ability. And if we did know WHY, it would not bring us any comfort.

He proceeded to talk about Sean — how he was “a young man of faith” and “a man for others” — and then he turned, metaphorically, to the throng of young people, many of whom had to be struggling more than the adults with the “WHY?”

Father Jerry knew he had to try to start helping them cope, and he began with an anecdote. It went like this…

I want to share with you a story about Puccini. Puccini was the great Italian writer of such classic operas as Madame Butterfly and La boheme. It seems when Puccini was fairly young he contracted cancer and so he decided to spend his last days writing his final opera, Turandot.

When his friends and disciples would say to him, “You are ailing, take it easy and rest,” he would always respond: “I am going to do as much as I can on my great masterwork, and it is up to you, my friends, to finish it.“

Well, Puccini died before the opera was completed. Now his friends had a choice: They could forever mourn their friend and return to life as usual, or they could build on his melody and complete what he started. They chose the latter.

In 1926, at the famous La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, when Puccini’s opera was played for the first time — conducted by the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini — and it came to the part in the opera where the master had stopped, Toscanini stopped everything, turned around with his eyes welling up with tears and said to the large audience, “This is where the master ends.” And he wept.

But then, after a few moments, he lifted his head, smiled broadly and said, “And this is where his friends began.” And he finished the opera.

You see the point — and the point of the question I asked you: What are you going to do about Sean’s death? What are you going to do about his unfinished masterpiece?

**

Father Jerry could have ended it there, and it would have been memorable, but he transitioned to a powerful image that piggybacked onto the Puccini story…

Think about the ocean. Picture yourselves standing on a dock beside one of those great, old-time sailing vessels. It’s standing there, sails folded, waiting for the wind.

Suddenly a breeze comes up. When the captain senses the breeze as a forerunner of the necessary wind, he quickly orders the sails to be let down and, sure enough, the wind comes, catches the sails full force and carries the ship away from the dock where you are standing.

Inevitably, you or someone on that dock is bound to say, “Well, there she goes.” And from our point of view, it indeed does go.

Soon, the mighty ship, laden with its crew and goods, is on the horizon, where the water and sky meet, and it looks like a speck before it disappears. It’s still mighty and grand, still filled with life and goods, but it’s left us.

We’re standing on the dock, quite alone. But, on the other side of the ocean, people are standing in anticipation, and as that speck on the horizon becomes larger and larger they begin to cry something different. They are crying, with joy and not abandonment, “Here she comes!” And at the landing, there is welcome, joy, embracing and celebration.

We miss Sean. He is quickly receding from our sight, and this funeral and his burial at the cemetery are our farewells, our version of, “There he goes.”

But goes where? From our sight, from our embrace, from our care and love and friendship. How we miss that. How we will miss him!

But he is not diminished, not made poorer. We must remember in faith that, “Here he comes!” is the cry on the eternal shore where Jesus, who understands the human heart, even when it goes wrong, is waiting.

And there is Sean, now forever larger than life, filled with life, intoxicated with life and laughter and in the arms of the One who makes all things new again, the One who says: “Welcome, Sean, welcome home!

**

As I typed those words, tears welled up. I hope it’s the same for some of you.

Happy Easter, everyone. It’s the Resurrection.

Note: If you would like to see all of the funeral or Father Jerry’s eulogy, you can do so here. Look for the words “Funeral Mass Livestream” near the bottom of the page. Father Jerry’s eulogy begins at the 22:30 mark.