Tell Us A Story

As a Christian minister, I have the privilege of serving people in times of personal loss.  I pray with them as they watch and wait for death to come.  I help them to organize and live through funerals, burials, cremations and the aftermath of such public experiences.  I come back to them in the days and weeks and months after the loss to talk and remember, to process and plan for the future.

One of the things I have found most satisfying in this process is the writing of real obituaries and the composing of funeral sermons that really address the life of the deceased.  

There was a time when newspaper obituaries were comprehensive, sensitive, artful, and (most important) free.  That time is past for most print newspapers and for most online obituary services provided by funeral homes.  

Public obituaries these days include just the facts--written in artless sentence fragments because proper subject/verb combinations require to much print and too many bytes.  Those obituaries are polite and proper, but they do not begin to capture the beauty and drama of a human life now over.

When I studied creative writing in high school and college, the exercise I loved the most was the character sketch.  I'm not always great on plot.  I don't go in for lots of detail in describing surroundings or circumstances, context or color.  But I took great delight in creating the contours of a character, in uncovering the meaning of a lifetime.

What I have found in thirty years of doing funerals is that a good obituary performs the same function.  If I have the chance, I will compose a fairly extensive obituary to include with a worship or memorial folder for the family of the deceased.  

One of the comforting challenges of a funeral sermon is to identify and then to celebrate those elements of a person's life story that illustrate the human condition, celebrate the goodness of life, and open a window on to the power of the Christian gospel.

I don't have time in my ministry for mere eulogy or encomium.  People deserve far more than those superficial forms and offer.  Real human beings have warts and flaws as well as dignity and beauty.  Family members, more than anyone else, know this about their loved ones.  

The challenge in dealing with the less than flattering characteristics of anyone is to do so with humor and love.  That's how we deal with one another's irritating characteristics in a healthy life.  There is no need to change that strategy in a funeral sermon.

So one of my tasks during the grief guidance process and the planning of the funeral is to listen for the stories of a life.  Bereaved people are glad to tell those stories.  It is a joy to listen as a family shares the highs and lows, the good and bad, the sublime and the ridiculous from the life of a loved one.  It is a satisfying challenge to weave those stories into a healing and hopeful message on that very difficult funeral day.

All that being said, I want to issue an invitation to you, dear readers.  

I would be honored if this blog would be a place where you would consider telling stories about your loved ones.  I cannot tell you who reads these words.  I do know that we have a little community from some twenty countries now. And I do know that telling the stories of our loved ones is a source of healing and hope that no amount of counseling, coaching and guiding could provide.

You have heard bits and pieces of Anne's story as we have gone along.  I will try to share more of that story in the days to come.  But now I encourage you to take a more active role in this conversation.  

Use the "comment" function to share a memory, a laugh, a tender moment, or even a conflict, that marked the life of a loved one lost.

We will do our best to listen.  And we will all be strengthened by the stories.