Speaking for the Dead

Most people know what I am about to say quite well:

I’m weird.

There are many ways that I am considered “weird,” “abnormal,” “odd,” or a “strange one,” but perhaps where my eccentricities stand out the most is how I view funerals.  I love good funerals.

If a funeral is done properly, then it is the mightiest vessel to process grief.  You know a good funeral by how you feel at the end.  If the intent was to make you “feel better,” well, the funeral probably missed the mark.  However, if it is done to be an expression of the deceased’s life, then a funeral hurts like a very cold knife, but it breaks the last walls of grief down.  You begin to remember all of the memories and the times you shared together and you weep for the times that won’t come back in this life, and your breath is ragged with love for that person and your vocal cords make unintelligible sounds, sounds that want to say, “I love you” in a language that can only be heard by the dead.

Then… the healing can begin.  The pieces are on the floor, and the time to make the shards of glass into a new object has begun.  An invitation exists.

However, what I see in eulogies is that officiators focus on the next destination, and not the people left behind.  There is comfort in knowing that a loved one is in heaven, and that should surely be stated.  However, there are more places to draw on, and these places can make much more sense to us in our times of grief.  We can comprehend that a loved one is in paradise, but we are here in a hellish earth without them.  How do we comfort the living more?  I firmly believe it is in the remembrance, in the acceptance and slow healing of wounds.  We cannot quickly glaze over them with the Band-Aid of faith in God, but along with our faith and our hope, we must remember our loved ones, and remember all of their life.

My minister, Vicki, gave the best eulogies I have ever heard.  I remember well the ones she gave during her time at my church, and I remember my mother’s fondly.  Vicki told us about my mother’s salvation, but the comfort I found was in the story and memory of my mother.  The funeral hurt, and it ripped my soul to hear about the woman I loved so much, the woman who should have been sitting next to me, but was not.  However, in that sanctuary, surrounded by family and friends, I could feel my heart begin to wake up.  Now that the pain was comprehended, realized, and understood, it was time to live again. 

I heard of a young man who lost his mother the other day, and the funeral did not mention the story of his mother, only her salvation.  I felt the deepest regret for him- how cruel!  His time to mourn deeply and without regrets was stolen from him!  Who dares take away what was mercifully given to me!  The thing I hate most in this world may be funerals that focus more a person’s salvation than the life they left behind.  The story they lived, all of it, including their salvation, is what the people, and family in particular, need to hear.  A half-baked eulogy is like only telling the story of Jesus on the cross and NOT his ministry, which was arguable just as important, if not more so.

I decided that if I ever wanted to create a ministerial job, it would be to give eulogies at funeral homes.  To be able to tell the stories of God’s people would be my highest honor.  I would try to tell the histories of the people as they walked with God on earth and as they transitioned into walking with God in heaven- both sides of the story.

Perhaps this is why my favorite book is Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.  The book follows a young man, met in the previous novel, named Ender, who goes from place to place researching people who have died and performing their Speaking, not a funeral, but a comprehensive eulogy of their whole life, their highs and their lows, their strengths and their weaknesses, and their triumphs and failures.  A Speaking would be slightly more humanist than I prefer, but it is closer than most eulogies I hear today.

Am I coming down too hard?  Possibly.  There is some comfort in eulogies that only talk about heaven.  However, when it comes to really working to heal a family stricken with grief, the last thing they need is to start forgetting their loved one, or to compartmentalize the time they shared with them.  Instead, the focus should be on remembering, fondly, the times shared, times that can be carried on into tomorrow.