It was her life she lived. When I reviewed again Ida’s life story that you, dear family, wrote, I had the strong impression of a unique journey that only she could have lived. Though similar in scope to the general narrative of many people fleeing war-torn and post-war Europe in the last century, and though similar to the narrative of many immigrants to Canada from northern Europe, her story had its own flavour. For example, just recall with me all the places she called home after emigrating from Germany and landing in Quebec City:

Regina and Weyburn in Saskatchewan, Montreal in Quebec, back to Prince Albert in Saskatchewan, Kelowna in British Columbia, then to Vancouver and finally to Ottawa in Ontario—and that’s just her time in Canada! Who else would have covered so much ground in the second largest nation by land mass on the planet? Her life was her own. Not someone else’s.

She never just stayed in one place. She moved on. Even though many circumstances surrounding her emigration and personal life events were beyond her control, you don’t get the impression that she just followed along. Whether something good or bad happened, she saw an opportunity and took it—took the initiative, took a risk filled with hope. She didn’t follow a script. She followed her heart.

So it is, I think, with our grief. Today we express our sorrow at losing Ida. In many ways it is a sad day, like the day she died. We must acknowledge our own way of grieving. Each of us does it differently. We no longer live in a cookie-cutter world where everything is done the same way for everyone, and everyone must conform to a standard method.

The pandemic has only accentuated this truth, especially when it comes to how families process their grief and how they ritualize their memorials of loved ones. It isn’t done the ‘same way’ for everyone. Some will do everything they need to do in a week. Some will take years before they are ready to have a burial.

It has been over two years since Ida died at Granite Ridge Long Term Care Home in Stittsville Ottawa, on February 3, 2021. You took the time you needed before you were ready to take this next step. And that is good. We must learn to respect our diversity. But we’ve travelled this road together, not alone. I think Ida would approve.

If there is anything that summarizes for me the adventurous and Canadian-geography-encompassing breadth of Ida’s life journey is that she didn’t do it alone. At different times, and in different places, various people, including close family members, accompanied her. Though ‘home’ meant several different street addresses over time, she rarely if ever was all by herself at those pivot points.

Whether with one son or the other, or her husband at the time, close friends, her brothers in Germany, or churches or health care institutions where she worked, she was part of a community wherever she went. Relationships and relating were important to her no matter where she lived.

And, in fact, that is my last and enduring image of her: where she lived the last chapters of her life at Granite Ridge. Rarely, if ever, did I find Ida alone in her room when I went to visit her. She was always in the activity room surrounded by her floor mates watching the TV, or waiting with her table mates in the dining room for the next meal, or in the hallway by the nurses’ station where she could monitor the high-traffic crossroads on the busy “Lake House” floor.

And though her death ended something important for you, and though we cannot see her any longer in the flesh, we can be confident that those relational bonds endure to this day. With the gift of faith, we can affirm that while your relationship with her has changed it has not ended. Nor, ever will. She continues today to live, move and have her being in the God of all hope and the source of all life.

Jesus says that he goes to prepare room for you (John 14:1-3). He makes a promise not just to everyone, but to you, personally. There is a place not just for Ida, but for you, too. In the divine realm, the holy house, the family of God—however you want to define it—you belong.

The message of the Gospel is intensely personal. It is not some general comment for the collective human race—though it is that, too. But today, as we continue to mourn the death of your beloved Ida, everyone in this room and watching online needs to hear a personal word of comfort spoken just for you: You belong, forever.

This personal word also goes beyond the promise of making room for you. God takes pleasure in spending time with us. The prophet Zephaniah describes how God “will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival” (3:17–18). 

These verses provide us with a profound word picture in which we see the almighty God of the universe taking delight in each of us. 

It’s like never getting sick of chocolate and enjoying it forever. Can you imagine ever getting sick of eating chocolate? Though Ida got tired of the taste and smell of chocolate after working in a chocolate factory in Berlin before coming to Canada, maybe she will be surprised in heaven. Because the party never ends!