A Funeral Rose on Valentine's Day

My freshman year of high school, my father died in early February. His wake was on Valentine’s Day. At its conclusion, a funeral attendant who closed his casket handed me a single rose from the bouquet adorning its cover. It seemed like a macabre twist on a day that wouldn’t feel happy again for years.

In my later teens, I always felt somewhat out of place among peers who associated Valentine’s Day with simple joys like chocolates. But when I learned that Valentine’s Day is named after a Christian martyr, I came to appreciate that some of history’s most powerful love stories don’t have happy endings.

Our modern, commercialized version of Valentine’s Day revolves around romance—or at least any form of affection worth rewarding with a Hallmark purchase. But the original Valentine is said to be a third-century saint who was executed under the Roman emperor Claudius II. Through his death, he modeled a kind of love that transcends sentimental affection and has never been very marketable.

His witness has less to do with romance than it does with self-giving, which he embraced unto death. For Christians, Valentine’s Day can remind us that love comes in many forms—chiefly, the cruciform. 

My dad was not a martyr. He wasn’t killed for his faith; he died of cancer. But he did live—and die—in a way that set an example for me. Early in his illness, my parents prayed fervently for healing. But they didn’t cling to their own imagined happy ending blindly. Though they believed a miracle could happen, they held their hope with open hands and sought to teach their young children to do the same.

On the day my parents told my five siblings and me about my dad’s diagnosis, he looked us in the eyes and said, “We found out today that Daddy has cancer. And we have decided that whether I live or die, we want my life to glorify God.” His radical entrustment made little sense to me then. But it has forever shaped my faith.

Another way my dad set an example for me was in how he spent his last years. My memories of his slow decline are marked by the intense effort he made to create special memories for our family despite his illness. A few summers before his death, he and my mom took us on an epic family vacation. He was in a wheelchair for most of it, but he made it into almost all our family photos. He was in pain, but he was there.  

Closer to the end of his life, we were watching a movie together when the closing credits started playing one of his favorite songs. It was the song, he said, to which I would learn to swing dance. He got out of bed, with oxygen tubes still in his nose, and danced with me until he was too winded to stand anymore. I know it was excruciating for him to do that. And I know he did it for me. On Valentine’s Day each year, I remember my dad and the love he showed me until the end of his life.

I also remember my mom, who modeled the same love-to-the-end by showing up every day after his death to raise six kids without a husband. Her long, lonely years of parenting were a kind of death to self that most of the time was completely invisible to others.

For a season in high school, I channeled my unresolved grief and anger toward her, as if hating her might dull the incurable ache of losing my other parent. In response to my rage, she made a letterbox for me to write anything I wanted about her to put in the box for her to read. She absorbed my hatred with a gentleness and grace that eventually quieted me. I am sure I’ll never know the full cost of that grace.

In my own ministry now as a parent and as a pastor, I am beginning to recognize the gap between what I want love to feel like and what it actually requires of me. And I am growing in my awe of Jesus, who uniquely fills that gap on my behalf. His willingness to be brought low, first as a human being and then as a man hanging on a cross, becomes a kind of ground zero for those who aspire to follow in his footsteps.

In our journey toward cruciform love, we will always be, first and foremost, recipients. But as recipients, we can expect we’ll be given the strength we need to be faithful on that journey—even if it takes us down paths would never choose for ourselves.

When my mom and my dad dreamed about their family as newlyweds, neither of them imagined the challenges that lay in store for them. Theirs wasn’t the kind of love story anyone signs up for. But their witness has taught me more about the gospel than any sermon I’ve heard. Their faithfulness, though imperfect, illustrated Jesus’ words to me: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24, ESV). Without sacrifice, love remains little more than a nice sentiment.

Sentiments, of course, are fine. I will certainly be eating my share of Valentine’s Day chocolate this year. But what makes Christian hope unique is its promise that when the sentiments fall flat or run out, sacrificial love still holds.

Our culture’s lingering obsession with Valentine’s Day is evidence that in all the commercialism, we are still looking for that love. Its true, cruciform nature will never cease to surprise us—which is exactly why we should never cease to proclaim it.

Hannah Miller King is associate rector at The Vine Anglican Church in Western North Carolina and the author of a forthcoming book about grief and hope.

• giftGift This Article

• Share

  Share arrow_down

Related