There are those times when, for whatever reason, I end up alone at the funeral home . . . alone meaning I am the only living, breathing human being in the place. Granted, I generally have company, but we are rarely in the same room and if we are, they are extremely quiet, minding their own business and caring nothing for mine. The silence that settles upon the building when the living leave is calming in its presence, offering a time to contemplate the day just ending or the ones to come, to ponder my mortality and that of those I cherish. It is a silence that allows me to focus, to accomplish, or to meditate if that be the need of the moment.

I’ve had folks ask me if I’m afraid when I’m in the company of the dead, to which I usually reply it’s not the dead you need to worry about. It’s the living. Those who have passed from this world to the next have never given me a reason to fear for my safety or my sanity—something I cannot say for the living.

But there are those among the living that don’t seem to know what to do with those who have died. It’s as though death necessitates a process that must be hurried along for the sooner it is over the better for all concerned, when nothing could be farther from the truth. There are families who will arrive on our doorstep promptly at 9:00 a.m. when their loved one departed on the 2:00 a.m. train to eternity. Sleep deprived and with no time to prepare, they arrive with every intention of participating in an arrangement conference about which they will remember nothing afterwards because their minds and bodies have already crossed the border of exhaustion. There has been no time to think of songs and scriptures, no time to rummage through pictures or to select the appropriate attire for the honoree. No time to process what has happened.

But wait, you may say. If death has taken its own sweet time in arriving, there has been time to prepare. Songs and scriptures may have been chosen and set aside, ready for use when the moment comes. Pictures may have been selected, arranged in chronological order and placed securely in an envelope for the trip to the funeral home – and mama may have picked out her own burial dress years ago and reminded you at every family gathering where in the closet it was hanging. It’s true, the details may have been decided, but there has been no time to process what has truly occurred. It does not matter if death took ten years or ten minutes to wreak its havoc, life is forever altered once that person is gone and no amount of “preparing” can prepare you for that loss. To hurry the process along or to shorten its duration is to deny the magnitude of what has been taken, but for some reason many of the living have a need for speed.

I can promise you this—the dead aren’t going anywhere. They will allow you the time you need. They will not care if you rest before you tackle the details of their service or don’t have them in the ground 24 hours after they breathe their last. It took a lifetime to reach this point, a lifetime of love and laughter and trials and memories. We do ourselves no favors when we presume that sooner is better than later . . . for later will come and with it all the regrets over things we wish we had done but did not think of at the time, stories we wish had been included, a favorite poem we had forgotten, people we should have called who would have come had they known. Things that, given time, would have come to mind and made the funeral service truly about the person who brought everyone together.

A funeral is like a going away party, but the change of residence is permanent and not even the telemarketers can find you. It should be filled with laughter over the good times and sorrow over the departure—and if someone put you in charge of planning that party, you’d take your time, obsessing over the details, making certain that everything was exactly as it should be. So . . .why is death so different?

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