Do you remember the first funeral you ever attended? Pause for a moment and think about that experience. Take into consideration your age at the time as well as the person being remembered by this ceremony. What was memorable about it? 

The first funeral I attended was for my great grandmother. While I didn’t know her well, I do recall visiting her in a nursing home where she lived in the years before her death. I looked her up online and found that she was born in 1885 and died in 1975. I was a young teen at the time. I don’t have a strong memory of attending, except the expectations of my behavior. 

The next funerals I attended would have been my grandparents starting in the 1980s. I remember all of us grandchildren being lumped together in a small alcove at a grandparent’s funeral. This was perhaps not the best approach because nerves led to giggles and stifled laughter. We were not exactly models of decorum. That grandparent delighted in us though, so I imagine him smiling or even laughing along with us. 

What I remember most is that my mother didn’t like to attend funerals. 

In fact, I remember that her strategy was to stop in during the calling or visitation, but not to remain for any type of ceremony. Not unless it was someone particularly dear to her. She also did not believe that children should attend funerals. 

This seems particularly ironic to me now that I have performed so very many funerals. I’ve served more than 100 families as an officiant. Families have taught me so much about the end of life and honoring lives lived. 

Families continue to influence my thoughts about the need for ceremony and the value of creating a safe space for feelings and story.  

This storytelling is sacred. Bringing together family and friends creates a way for the stories and the people to be held together. Families have also taught me just how meaningful it is when others come to stand with them in the loss, pain, sorrow and stories about the one who lived. 

It is this storytelling that is an essential part of the narrative of a family’s lived experiences. Memorial services create a container in which to lift a life story. Sometimes this truth-telling is complicated. Families choose to name the full truth of their loved one’s life – that he or she could be both loving and difficult. Or out of loss and discomfort, some stories are left behind in favor of a more glowing image of the deceased. It is in telling and witnessing these complexities that families begin to find the healing they seek after a death loss. 

When we attend a funeral, we become part of the story too. 

We get to witness, learn, and hear more about someone we may have only known playing a card game, watching a sports team, sitting in a bible or book study group, or serving together as volunteers. The glimpse we had is not the whole story. The whole story we can never know. 

What is your first funeral memory? What is your most recent funeral memory? What was meaningful to you? What memory-making occurred that is carrying you forward from a loss? Perhaps the best we can do is witness for one another what losses mean. 

How do your experiences of funerals influence your thoughts on grief, loss, and bereavement? 

If you are struggling to find your footing in your grief process, it might be a good time to ask for help. Consider reaching out to your pastor, a therapist, or a grief coach. 

As a grief coach, I work with people navigating the space between loss and life reconstruction. If you are coaching curious or simply needing a way to explore the questions of the moment, I invite you to sign up for the 45-minute Live the Questions offering. 

This is an effective way to learn about the co-collaborative process of coaching, as well as gaining insight about your own grief needs and how coaching might support them.