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Life Worth Giving
Amanda Witt on the Immeasurable Value of Wasted Lives
Today I and five other women served a funeral meal for a hundred mourners. The proceedings didn’t move me—the deceased was full of years, and besides, I’d never met her, though I did have to walk past her open casket to get to the church kitchen, hurrying my children, not because I was worried about their fragile little psyches but because I simply didn’t feel like coping with whatever questions or emotions a dead body might raise. I’d rearranged our complicated schedules and driven across town in icy weather to help serve the funeral meal; that was enough.
Having settled the kids in an empty classroom with their schoolbooks, I rolled up my sleeves and set to work preparing lunch. The other women in the kitchen had known the dead woman, and while we pulled pork and cut cake and stocked relish trays, they talked about her.
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Amanda Witt discusses Christianity, culture, and life as a homeschooling mother at the weblog Wittingshire (www.wittingshire.blogspot.com). She lives with her husband and three children in Port Orchard, Washington.
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