On taking Tess to a funeral

No pictures for this post because I don’t actually bring my camera to funerals in general and I don’t have a good phone for pictures.  (That is not a complaint.  I do not want a new phone, however far behind I am with my old one.) 
Our pastor’s mother died recently, and last Friday was her funeral.  I took the kids, because it was a noon Mass, and Michael was at work.  I don’t have a problem with taking kids to funerals – they’re part of life, after all.  I even had the presence of mind to feed them beforehand, because going through a noon funeral with four hungry kids seemed like the height of folly to me.
Tess was on her game.  In the peaceful quiet that enveloped the church while the 15 Dominican priests who were concelebrating lined the center aisle as the family said their final goodbye before the casket was closed, she fell off the pew.  It wouldn’t have been so bad, but her face hit one of the feet of the kneeler, and I knew it was going to be a loud one.  I picked her up and began hurrying to the back as she was beginning her cry – you know, that ominous, silent intake of breath before the real screaming begins. 
Happily, it wasn’t actually too bad an injury and she recovered quickly.  We made our way back to our pew, only to have Tess announce loudly, “There’s Fr. Boniface!”  Of course, she was right.  He was there. 
I’ve been trying to work with Tess on her whisper voice at Mass.  She loves using it other places, stopping me to whisper something in my ear multiple times in a row – same whispered message which for some reason takes on extra meaning for her when she gets to whisper it to me.  This enthusiasm dies at the doors of the church, though.  Hannah shushed her as she prattled, and Tess’s next contribution to the delight of those around her was a loud, indignant, “Don’t say SHUSH to me!  Don’t say SHUSH to me!”
For while after that we had relative peace and quiet, but the Mass was a long one and there was a short talk at the end.  We were seated farther back than usual in the church because we got there a bit late (although it started later than we got there), so we couldn’t see very well.  I let Naomi and Sim head up the side aisle to find a seat on the floor where they could see – a beautiful funeral, and all those Dominicans in the sanctuary, they definitely needed to be able to see. 
Towards the end, Tess wanted to join Naomi and Sim.  I stepped into the aisle to watch her go, because even though the choir director (who knows my kids well) was between her and the altar if she joined them, he wasn’t necessarily expecting to do any child-wrangling, so I wanted to be sure that I’d have at least a chance to stop her if she made a break for it.  Talking and crying are one thing; storming the sanctuary during Mass is another.
I needn’t have worried.  Part of the way to her siblings’ strategic seat, Tess noticed the St. Therese shrine and decided to pay a visit.  No…no, she didn’t actually want to visit the saint.  She wanted to enact a safe-cracker, jiggling the handle of the safe in the corner of the shrine, the one where people place the money for the candles they light.  Nothing says “Solemn Funeral” like a 2-year-old pixie in a Valentine’s day dress trying to get the candle money out of the safe in the saint shrine. 
I hope nobody minded the minor distractions Tess made at the funeral.  I was so glad to go, and her antics didn’t distress me (although that’s probably because she’s my fourth, not my first) or keep me from entering into the Mass.  The beauty, the loveliness of the send-off of a son for his mother, of the Church for her, in the context of the Mass eclipsed any craziness that might have been added by a tiny one.  Our pastor has repeatedly told us that children belong at Mass, so I take him at his word, and trust that eventually she’ll sit quietly like her siblings, even if it takes quite a while.