Well said, Lajos! Thanks for the response. I love the dialog – hope we can get more folks involved. The collective wisdom of funeral professionals is phenomenal – but they’re so busy, it’s hard to tap into it!

Kim,

Thanks for the comment and great thoughts. I have often wondered about the iconic needs of mankind relative to loss and the rites and rituals that attend those circumstances.  There is plenty of evidence in the form of spontaneous memorials for celebrity and tragic losses that suggests a more universal emotional issue that needs to be expressed.  I think that as funeral directors, all we can do is to start the family on a healthy journey of grief, giving them sense of what’s to come and to create opportunities in the form of services and ceremonies that support and nurture those first steps.

In an eclectic society such as ours, where the elements of ceremony are anything but uniform, it becomes very difficult to “know the right thing” to do to help the living get “where they need to be.” And only they know “where” that really is!

So much of mourning takes place in private – in the quiet hours of the morning, or just before you fall asleep; when you pass by a favorite local spot, or hear a song that brings a memory to mind so powerfully it takes your breath away. Those are moments that we are not privy to, and cannot participate in, or orchestrate.

Thanks for a thought-provoking post! You can see you got me thinking…at 5:30 in the morning!