Ceremonies are echoes

When was the last time you went to a funeral, be it at a religious establishment or a funeral home, and had it be so unique that you could remember the details years later, it was so distinct?

For the most part, if you remove the photo at the front, these celebrations of life have little if any of the resonance of the person whose life is being celebrated. Like choosing off a menu that is limited to minimalist options, the opportunity to have a celebration of life reflect the person's whose life is being celebrated in any meaningful way is almost zero to none.

And we wonder why they offer little, if any at all, solace to the loved ones.

Part of this, of course, is on the industry itself. When you minimize the options, you optimize the efficiency and, no surprise, you maximize the profitability. The fewer the options, the faster things get done, the more industrial-like the whole operation can be.

Pair that with the belief that grief is something to "get through" or "get over", and there is no time for curating a ceremony that echoes the life of the person being celebrated, or that would make of those in attendance witnesses rather than attendees.

To witness comes with responsibility. It means being present to the life being celebrated and carrying the burden of who they were with you into the world.

It offers a chance for those who knew and loved the person to be burdened, in the most beautiful way, with making more meaning of the life that has ended by sharing it with others.

To carefully consider and create a ceremony like this asks much of the loved ones who are planning the affair. It begins by asking them to slow and truly feel their grief take hold. To have it be something that they move forward with rather than try to offload as quickly as possible.

It asks them to be with the dead, to truly re-member them, and not only from the good old days, but from their final dying days, too.

And this is no small request here in the West.

So why do it? Why slow the whole down and have it "drag on"? What benefits might this offer?

In my experience, the most obvious is that it allows us to actually engage with our grief. If we seek to have our grieving be something that does not feel like an anchor dragging us down, it is important that we become familiar with it, to know it, to appreciate how it appears in our bodies, our minds. When we get to know our grief, we make a friend of an otherwise foe.

This time also allows us to truly re-member our loved one. To gather them before us again, to cry, to laugh, to wonder. These are times for sharing stories and recalling adventures, and in so doing, gather those around us who will grow closer through the death.

And as all this is happening, and so much more, there is a shape to the ceremony that begins to form, almost on its own. It has a certain sound, a certain taste, a look and a feel to the thing... it begins to come to... life.

Holding it all up before you, you begin to realize that the shape it is taking is that of the loved one. The ceremony is not about them, it IS them.

When that realization comes through, and when the Ceremony is attended and witnessed and sung and prayed into being, we find ourselves no longer burdened by the grief. We instead find ourselves face to face with... love, the love that was the seed of our grief, echoing all around us, holding us in a gentle embrace.