My wife and I are fans of Rizzoli & Isles on TNT. One of the actors on
the show recently committed suicide and the show wrote his death into the
storyline by having him die in a car accident. The follow up show was about
continuing on with life and the tribulations friends and family go through in
the aftermath of such a sudden event. I thought the show did a good job within
the time constraints it has in presenting a glimpse of how some of us react
differently to the death of a friend or relative. The show lead me to
thinking about the way some funerals I attended affected me and how my attitude
toward the entire idea changed.
The first funeral I ever attended was my Dad’s four days after my 14th
birthday. Between the wake, the funeral and the people that came by our house I
ran the gamut of weird handshakes over that first week. I don’t think I’ve been
graced with as many dead fish handshakes combined in all the years since those
few strange days. I really hated the whole experience, though we did have some
lighter moments that week thanks to some of the folks that spent a lot of
time there in the aftermath. Little did I know then how important those moments really
were. I decided I would never go to another funeral until my own and was
steadfast in that way of thinking until a close friend passed on almost 20
years later.
I was asked to get up and say a few words at his memorial service and the
request really surprised me. I spent time putting words down on paper figuring
it would help me focus on the difficult task at hand. I still have the pages I
wrote for that day and recently stopped to read them while digging through some old scribbles I've kept. I’ve
kept them around for their significance because that experience changed me. It
changed the way I looked at the strange rituals we humans have around death and
presented me with a new attitude toward them going forward. I finally realized
that day that funerals are not for the departed. What do they care what suit
you put them in or how fancy the casket is because we can’t ask them anyway.
The important part of the whole ritual I came to see is the bringing together
in one place those people who had their lives touched by this man. I spent a
good part of that day sharing stories about him with people I had never met
previously that come to appreciate him as much as I did. It was truly a noetic experience realizing that this was
what the ritual was about. Our common bound shared through one individual and the
lives he touched by being who he was allowed all of use to come together to
celebrate and remember our friend. I'm sure others have come to a similar conclusion , so I guess I'm a little slow on the uptake apparently when it comes to some things. We can only understand what we can understand.
My views on many things have changed since then though I'm still not the first person in line when the time comes for a funeral. The one thing I do know now is a funeral really is an
opportunity for those of us left to carry on a chance pool our spiritual
resources so no one ever truly dies. So keep sharing stories of those who have moved on to keep their memory alive. I 'm going to.
