Essay: You should go to the funeral

You should go to the funeral (or create your own) 

I’ve written previously about how you should have a funeral for yourself, and I’m sticking to it. But you should also attend the funerals, memorials, celebrations of life, wakes or whatevers for the people you care about. Unless you can’t. Because sometimes you can’t. If that’s the case, I suggest creating your own. Find a way to grieve or wait for the grief to find you.

Aunt Muriel (center) helping at our wedding rehearsal

I grew up attending funerals and visitations on the regular. They were announced on the local AM radio station that my parents listened to 24-7. This is how the announcer said it: The funeral of Betty Smith will be at 3 pm on Saturday afternoon at ABC Lutheran Church. Friends may call at the Small Town Funeral Home from noon to 2 pm that day. Friends may call! As I child I wondered: Who are they calling? The dead person?

Translation: you go to the funeral home, walk past the casket while trying not to be creeped out, look at the photos on poster boards, shake hands with or hug the family members, drink some red punch from a Styrofoam cup, and then head over to the church. (After the funeral there would be more red punch, Jello and platters of ham sandwiches on buns with too much butter). This is how we did things. I went to the funerals and visitations of all the relatives who died, all the church people we knew and anyone else with whom we were remotely connected. This mantra was unspoken: always go to the funeral.

Until I turned 25 and move halfway across the country. I was thousands of miles away from most of the people I knew who were likely to die. That’s when I started missing funerals. I missed a lot of them. I flew back for the funerals of my grandparents, but missed the service of a great-uncle with whom I had been close. Then I missed the funerals of a few more great-aunts, great-uncles and cousins. (I’m from a big extended family). I only made the funeral of a great-aunt with whom I was close because she literally died while I was on the plane going to make an already-planned visit (she wasn’t even sick!) I wore knee-high red boots to the funeral, because I’d packed no other footwear besides running shoes.

Over the years, I’ve accepted that I will miss some funerals. I’ve sent cards and flowers. I’ve made phone calls, sent emails and texts, sent money. Life with three children has made travel complicated and expensive. I’ve unintentionally become a person who doesn’t always go to the funeral. I’ve even missed a few funerals here in my adopted home town, of acquaintances I cared about, but life with kids got in the way. Recently, I confess, I intended to attend a funeral for a former colleague, but I forgot because I didn’t write it down. I realize that I’m going to miss some funerals, but something inside me chafes.

All this is to say that when a favorite aunt died last June and I realized I couldn’t go the funeral (they called it a celebration of life), it hit hard. My aunt Muriel was dear to me. She and my uncle lived in California, where I attended seminary and earned a master’s degree. I knew exactly two people in California (them) when I uprooted my life and quit a perfectly good job to move halfway across the country. My parents were alarmed. My friends were perplexed. I was young! I wanted adventure! I was bored with the Midwest flatlands!

When I got to California, everything was… different. I had major culture shock, I was dreadfully broke, I struggled to make friends. My respite was to drive 2-hours to my aunt and uncle’s house. Here were people who loved me, who “got” me, who had also left the Midwest to seek a different life. They didn’t think I was crazy! They knew what it was like to leave, and how you can’t really ever go home again.

I loved Muriel like a second mother. She was a runner. She shopped at the farmer’s market. She cooked quinoa. She knew how to serve an artichoke. She wore scarves. She loved books. She made up a room for me. She listened to my worries and fears. I learned that home wasn’t just a place in the Midwest; home could be anyplace with people you love and experiences you share together.

 My aunt and uncle on my ordination day

I stayed in touch with my aunt and uncle over the years after I left California; they surprised me by attending my ordination back in the Midwest. They eventually moved to Colorado, where my aunt lived in the care of her beloveds until Parkinson’s Disease took her away. She died in the late spring last year; a celebration of life was set for what would have been her 81^st birthday on summer solstice. My husband and I had already planned a trip to the East Coast to see his family. I scoured Google Flights. Could we get back to Boston and fly direct to Denver? Could I leave the kids with my husband and go back alone? Could I fly red eye? Could I hire a plane? (Just kidding. Sort of). At some point, hunched over a laptop, I realized the inevitable. I couldn’t make it. I felt sick.

Maybe we’ll come to Denver and visit sometime, I said to my uncle, in the off-hand way you say, “let’s have lunch sometime” when you have no concrete plan. But then a couple months later, I thought, well, why not fly to Denver? We have other extended family in the area that my kids haven’t met/don’t remember. Let’s just go. I bought 4 plane tickets. At some point in the planning process it occurred to me: I am creating the funeral that I need to attend.

Sort of. There wasn’t a funeral. There wasn’t an agenda. We just showed up. Then another cousin got wind of my plan and she decided to fly in, too. With the extended family in the area, it became a Gathering (with a capital G). It wasn’t a funeral, but it became a way to process my grief.

Over a too-short long weekend, we had meals at the home that my uncle shares with his daughter (my cousin) and her family. We met up with another cousin and her family who live nearby; her mom (my other aunt) lives close, too. We ate dinner around a big table and laughed and told stories about our grandmother and her farm. That windmill! The fort we made! The way she could see every speck of dirt on the floor! We (the women of a certain age) watched ridiculous videos about perimenopause and laughed some more. We took the kids to a trampoline park and watched the next generation make memories together like the ones we have. We perused Muriel’s jewelry; my uncle encouraged us to take something to remember her by. Since she and I were the same size, I also left with a couple of her shirts and two scarves. They still smelled like some sort of essential oil; they smelled like her. This was the moment the tears flowed.

These cousins are beautiful souls

You should go to the funerals and celebrations of life of the people you care about. But sometimes you really just can’t go. But the point isn’t necessarily the funeral. The funeral is a ritual, and ritual can be created anywhere, any time. A ritual is a way to make meaning, a way to process the emotions that come up. Rituals can be done in all kinds of ways. Meals, story telling, baking a family recipe, holding an heirloom, going to places that mattered to your loved one. I need to amend my “you should go to the funeral” mantra. Perhaps it’s more like “you should grieve the ones who love with whatever rituals bring healing and peace and connection.” And grief work is ongoing, not just one day or weekend. I’ll need to workshop a new mantra.

A few weeks ago, my 4-year-old and I were in the locker room getting dressed after a swimming lesson. A woman nearby was helping two recalcitrant toddlers into their swimsuits and we exchanged a knowing look. She noticed our last name on my son’s backpack and asked if we were Jewish (she was). I said no, but she had such a warmth about her that I found myself telling her about how I once took a Christian youth group to visit synagogue and how I found the worship meaningful. I told her, laughingly, that the rabbi gave the Christian kids a bit of a shock when he said that many Jewish people don’t focus on an afterlife or necessarily believe in a heaven. Oh, she said, I’d say that differently. She continued: the people we love live on in our memories. That’s how they stay alive. We say: May their memories be a blessing. I felt some tears again, and was reminded how the grief work continues, for all of us.