Matthew's Funeral

At 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 19, 2021 we gathered at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in-person and by live stream to celebrate the life of Matthew James Briggs. All were encouraged to wear ocean colors. Matthew's funeral service leaflet and service recording are available online. 

For his funeral, Matthew prepared his own eulogy written from my (his spouse, Victoria Szydlowski's) perspective. I read the text that follows at his funeral, with the italicized text indicating my introduction of his eulogy, and the unitalicized text indicating his own words.

Welcome to all of Matthew’s friends, family, and all who have been brought together here through Matt’s love.

With a generosity so typical of Matthew’s spirit, he saw this public remembrance as an opportunity to create, process his death, and continue speaking to his values, his faith, and his love, and so he composed his own eulogy, written from my perspective.

 I am honored to read Matthew’s words today. Please foreground Matt’s voice and intentions throughout the questions, characterizations, and assurances to follow; and consider Matt’s choice to write his own remembrance in my voice as an invitation to continue your conversations with Matt.

Good afternoon. My name is Victoria Szydlowski, and Matthew James Briggs was the love of my life. I’m honored to be the one burdened with trying to memorialize someone who meant so much to so many of us. I would love to hear what your eulogy might have sounded like had you been the one selected to give it, and I hope that over time you will share what you would most like to say about Matt with me. 

Most of all, I want Matt to be proud of what I say here today. I want to do right by him. I think the thing he most wanted all of you to know is that he is always with us now, everywhere we go, and that maybe he was even while he was alive. He’s like God in that way, in the sense that we are all God, each an interconnected piece in a web of creation so incomprehensibly vast that we can never extricate ourselves from one another. He would also want you each to know that you can speak to him any time you’d like, and to know that if you’re met with silence, he is present and with you in that silence. 

I loved every part of him unfathomably and intimately as if I was able to access that perfect feeling of self-love and it was a part of myself and I saw myself as perfectly holy and beautiful as I saw Matt’s body. I am more heartbroken than I thought possible in a human being, and yet here I am, speaking to you all. How incredible we humans are that we carry on at all.

Matt loved the depths of thought and feeling that one achieves when engaged and entangled with any great art: literature, music, film, anything. He became an English teacher because he thought he was getting away with something to be paid to discuss great books and plays and poetry with young people.

But it was the people part of that sentiment that was Matt’s true muse. He loved people. Matthew was in love with the world. He loved people’s flaws, loved people in spite of them. He loved the connection that a shared sense of humor offers. He loved being in community with young people, most of all, and teaching was difficult for Matt in proportion to the extent to which he cared about his students. The ones he felt he had failed to connect with stuck with him the most, and I would often catch him daydreaming about how he might have approached a situation with a student differently.

Matt became most excited, most alive, when engaged in conversations around oppression and liberation. He left behind few assets to distribute in his last will and testament, but he made clear his wishes that we establish a memorial fund that would honor his intention to 1) serve marginalized youth and 2) lovingly challenge privileged youth to consider how they may more equitably share their power.

A common thread among Matt’s friends is his ability to balance the deep and serious with the light and hilarious. I know he would have wanted us to seek that balance as well, to either not take ourselves as seriously as we do or to become more intentional about reflecting and yearning for wisdom. 

Matthew and I found a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church because it proclaims at every turn that God is Love. Matthew was Love. He didn’t always say or do the right thing, and I know as his confessor that no one was harder on him than he was. But he was love. That is to say, Matt lived to love others, and he loved to be loved. He loved attention. He loved making a room laugh. He loved sharing his creativity and drawing others into his playfulness, that is to say, his godliness.

I want to honor the unique relationships that Matthew shared with each of you. Only you and he will ever truly know the contours and texture of your bond, whether you were a family member, a colleague, a friend, a fellow cancer patient, an EfM participant, a student. What a sacred gift you both shared and continue to share. I wonder how his death might change your relationship. Matthew taught me that he didn’t lose anything from cancer, but cancer changed his relationship with many things. 

So much of Matt’s life after getting diagnosed was about learning how to live. I wonder what he taught you about how to live? 

Life is short and we haven’t much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us along the way. So, be quick to love, make haste to be kind—and the blessing of God goes with us.

Amen.

Matthew's Reception

Immediately following Matthew's funeral, we gathered outside under the sun and blue sky on the steps of the cathedral for a reception hosted by friends from Matthew's education for ministry (EfM) classes.

At 5:00 pm, we gathered at Agua Verde Café in a brief thunderstorm followed by a rainbow, sunset, and a waxing gibbous moon. We listened to a playlist (recommended to be consumed in shuffle!) curated by Matt's older brother, Josh, and watched a slideshow of pictures of Matt over the years. Josh was the MC for a series of readings throughout the evening that meant a lot to Matt, including some of Matt's own words that meant a lot to us. 

• "On the Death of The Beloved" by John O'Donohue, read by Matt's father, Paul Briggs
• "Bone Within the Bone" by Matthew Briggs, read by Matt's sister, Meghan Lynch, and nephew, Henry Lynch

There is a bone

within the bone,

deeper than marrow,

like light.

In a PET scan,

the brightest light

among the constellation

of cancer is always

the heart, a sun

among stars.

• "Meditations Before Kaddish," read by Matt's friend, Rachel Baker
• "Sonnet 18" by Shakespeare, read by Matt's younger brother, Caleb Briggs
• "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay, read by Matt's friend, Jared Lasonde
• "Cædmon's Hymn," by Cædmon, read by Matt's friend, Garret Quinn Fiddler
• "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour," by Wallace Stevens, read by Matt's friend, Carolyn Callaghan
• "The Body is Not an Apology" by Sonya Renee Taylor, read by Matt's friend, Emily Seery
• "Fully Formed Flower" by Matthew Briggs, read by Matt's friend, Anita Annan

The way we think about a child’s death is directly connected to the way we think about a child’s life. If we see their activities and personalities as merely undeveloped, as an experiment before they’re old enough to actually decide what they like to do and the person they want to be, the life and death are utterly senseless. Why, God? What was the point?

If, however, we see children as whole people, ten years of life are exactly that. They weren’t waiting to fulfill their parents’ expectations. They weren’t seeds waiting to germinate. They were fully formed flowers, little as they might appear. 

• "The Guest House" by Rumi, read by Matt's sister-in-law, Carol Fahey
• "If I’m going to die, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart. If I’m going to live, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart." by Ram Dass, read and followed with 10 seconds of silence by Matt's older brother, Josh Briggs

With love and thanksgiving for Matthew's life!