Tag: Grief and Grieving

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I’m a Funeral Director. And Yes, My Stories Are Insane

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For something that literally happens to everyone, death is a remarkably taboo subject in American culture. It makes some sense, though. Who wants to think about the lights going off permanently, let alone deal with the actual logistics of dying?

That’s why I’m here. I’m a funeral director. I help you with the things you don’t want to deal with. No, it’s not exactly like Six Feet Under. Yes, you have to go to school to be a funeral director, at least in New York State. Everybody always seems surprised when I tell them that — maybe they think any guy selling bootleg Yankees hats off the street could throw on a suit and start handling funerals and grieving families.

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That’s ridiculous, for a lot of reasons. Not only are you dealing with dead bodies, which, beyond being frightening to most people, can also be host to all kinds of diseases, but there’s also the governmental red tape and transactions that could see tens of thousands of dollars changing hands. It’s certainly not a career someone could jump into blindly and excel at… especially given some of the situations I encounter regularly. These are just a few slices of what it’s like to be a New York City funeral director, one of the most overlooked, but essential, careers a person can have.

A normal day is never what YOU think of as a normal day

>For starters, I want to clear something up: every now and then I’ll run into someone who thinks it’s crazy that funeral directors charge money for what we do. It’s not. We do the job that other people can’t or won’t do. We provide a valuable service to the community. We’re not looking to rip you off, we’re just looking to be compensated for the work we do. Most people don’t have to deal with questions about whether they should make money in exchange for working hard, but death can elicit some strange behavior in the living.

My normal workdays are filled with events most people won’t ever experience in their lives. Picking up and tending to dead bodies, dealing with grieving families, taking funerals out to churches and cemeteries. To put it into perspective, remember that day at work when you spilled coffee on your pants and had to walk around with a huge stain all day? Well, my version of that involves throwing out a white shirt I was wearing because body fluid got all over it. The body fluid wasn’t mine. Yeah.

But, just like you, I have massive amounts of paperwork I have to do. After all, a job is a job is a job.

Hopefully you won’t have to attend too many funerals, but if you live long enough you’re almost certainly going to have face the music at least a few times. They’re rarely pleasant (except jazz funerals. Everyone should experience a jazz funeral — that’s how I want to go out.) but they’re a reality, and when you do have to go to one, there are a few things to keep in mind that will make your experience — and the funeral director’s — much better.

There’s no official dress code, but don’t push it

I understand that this nation is experiencing a full “dressing-down revolution,” but let’s evaluate. If you’re a male family member, a suit is almost a must. If you can’t wrangle a suit, slacks and a button-down are acceptable, but try not to dip below that. Polos are borderline and T-shirts are damn near disrespectful. I saw a guy walk into my place wearing an Angry Birds shirt, jorts, and Crocs. You’re going to a funeral, not a taping of Monday Night Raw. Put some effort in.

As for the ladies, just look nice. You have a few more options than the guys, but make sure it’s nothing too crazy, and NO JEANS. I swear I once had a lady walk in for a wake wearing a bikini and a cover-up that didn’t quite “cover up.” I assure you that anything you can wear to the beach isn’t appropriate to wear while standing in front of a casket. You don’t have to be a MENSA member to understand this.

Funerals are not the time or place for a buffet

In New York, we can’t have food in the funeral home. This isn’t just our rule, it’s also the New York State Board of Health’s rule. Food attracts bugs, vermin, and other unwelcome guests into funeral homes. We know this. The Board of Health knows this. The sign in our lobby is there so you know it.

This doesn’t mean “all food except the three dozen donuts and a box of coffee.” This isn’t Golden Corral. You should be able to handle going two or three hours without food — it’s why most wake times are split up, so you have a couple of hours for dinner in between.

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One day somebody tried to bring in four pizzas and a case of beer for a wake. I was tempted to let him in, because who doesn’t love pizza, but I had to stop him at the door. This led to my being cursed out in vile, creative fashion, but hey, those are the rules. And really you should know that pizza is only acceptable at a wake if it’s for one of the Ninja Turtles or Kevin from Home Alone.

Drinking, death, (and sex) go hand in hand, but know your limits

A lot of people need a nip or two to get through a funeral. It’s stressful, and sure, you might want to take the edge off. DO NOT DRINK TOO MUCH. Too many times I’ve witnessed people puking all over the bathrooms here. Years from now, you never want to hear the question, “Hey, remember at grandma’s funeral when you did seven tequila shots back to back at dinner and vomited into a potted plant?”

Things can get even dicier when sex is added to alcohol — death and sex have long been connected in art and literature, a truth I see lived out more frequently than you might expect. I had a funeral for an older woman who had a granddaughter about my age. The granddaughter was involved in the funeral arrangements, and during the afternoon visitation, everything went smoothly. As she was leaving, she invited me to a bar to join her for drinks between sessions, but seeing as I had to work the night session of the wake, I declined.

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Well, when she got back from the bar she was bombed. Staggering all over the place, knocking a plant down, slurring her words. It was bad. She mentioned something about needing to talk to me, but I blew her off, chalking it up to buzzed babble. When she disappeared for a while and the ruckus seemed to die down, I decided to slip off to my office to decompress.

Once I turned the light on, I saw that she was in there, sleeping. I woke her up (more or less to make sure she wouldn’t vomit in there), and she immediately clung on to my chest, talking about “wanting to thank me.” That hand on my chest surely made its way down to my crotch, and she was not letting go, despite my protests.

At that point, I knew I had to get her out of my office and off of my crotch, since no good could come out of this situation. I started to steer her out of the office by her shoulders while she began kissing my neck, making it out into the hallway. Luckily, one of her cousins saw me and pulled her away, and someone drove her home after that. At her grandmother’s service the next morning she couldn’t look me in the eye. Only after the casket was lowered did she come up to me and apologize.

Funerals are times for mourning, not violent grudge matches

Emotions run high enough during funerals, so don’t make things worse by continuing old grudges or starting new ones. One bad exchange can set off a powder keg.

I witnessed two brothers squabble over money from the minute they came in to make arrangements. The morning of the funeral it reached its breaking point. What started as a loud argument in front of the casket progressed to a screaming match in the lobby.

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By the time I got to them I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing — each brother was holding an unplugged floor lamp like a lightsaber, circling each other. It took me a second to process everything, but when I finally spoke up to tell them how ridiculous the situation was, one them smacked the other over the back with the lamp (I do have to respect the opportunistic nature of that fella), which led to a quick skirmish on the floor. It broke up pretty quickly, but it was neither the time nor the place for it — the correct time and place would’ve been the ECW Arena in 1997 — and everybody left feeling pretty embarrassed.

If you’re not hammered, violent, or blatantly rule-breaking, most other requests are OK

On the other side of the coin, if you have a special request for your loved one, don’t be scared to speak up. One person wanted me to play Nirvana on the way to the cemetery because it was the deceased’s favorite band. “Oh, and one more thing — CRANK IT.” You bet your ass I did it. There wasn’t a cooler hearse in the world that day. It got some strange looks from the people we passed on the street, but whatever.

I’ve received requests to wear a Mets tie while doing a funeral, to pass someone’s favorite bar on the way to the cemetery, to lead an entire collection of people attending a funeral in singing The Golden Girls’ theme, pretty much anything you can imagine. Have I rolled my eyes at some of the requests? Absolutely. But you know what? When you see how much it means to the family, it makes it all worth it.

People don’t really want to talk about death or funerals, and yeah, funeral directing is a strange job. Having your mortality thrust in your face every day you go into work gives you a pretty unique outlook on life. I don’t particularly mind the job as a whole — I wish it were more 9-5, but hey, I get to help people, and that feels pretty good.

Complete Article HERE!

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Parents Honor Daughter With Tea Party Instead of Funeral

She believed “love is a superpower” that could make everything all right.

BY

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In her last days, 5-year-old Julianna Yuri Snow of Vancouver, Washington, couldn’t move her arms or legs or breathe on her own, but that didn’t stop her from being as fabulous as she could possibly be. Every morning, she put on a princess dress and tiara and painted her nails with glittery polish, telling CNN reporter Elizabeth Cohen that “there’s no such thing as too much glitter.”

002The little girl suffered from an incurable neuromuscular disorder. Doctors said that there was “no light at the end of the tunnel” for her, and so she chose to forego medical treatments and died at home instead of in the hospital on June 14, 2016.

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Because Julianna loved tea parties, her parents decided to honor her spirit by throwing a whimsical party at the City Bible Church the following Saturday instead of a traditionally somber funeral.

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Friends arrived wearing floral print dresses and shirts, and the hall was decorated with everything she loved, including bright colors, pink balloons, and lots of glitter. There was even a nail bar where guests could give each other manicures and a cupcake bar where they could decorate frosted treats.

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One of the tables was filled with her old toys and tiny dolls, which the children who came were welcome to take home. And on one long table laden with tea sandwiches, there was a poster made by her grandfather, Tom Snow, which read, “Text from Julianna: Arrived in heaven! I am healed! Thank you for your love! Hope to see you in God’s time,” and a banner with a favorite saying coined by Julianna herself:

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Complete Article HERE!

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Funeral Home Gets A Therapy Dog To Help Clients Cope With Grief

By Dina Fantegrossi

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Experiencing the loss of a loved one is devastating. It is the most stressful, disorienting and agonizing event we can suffer through. For some, the process of planning and attending the memorial services for their deceased companion is more than they can bear.

One White Plains, NY funeral home has found a way to ease that burden, if only for a short while.

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Ballard-Durand Funeral Home has an extra staff member who provides a special kind of comfort to grieving clients. Her name is LuLu and she is a therapy dog. The majority of the facility’s clients have heard about their one-of-a-kind employee and specifically request Lulu’s services when they come in.

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Matthew Fiorillo, the president of  Ballard-Durand Funeral Home, told NBC Today that he came up with the idea of getting a therapy dog during a particularly stressful visit to the airport. Fiorillo’s flight had been canceled and he was battling the anger and anxiety of the situation when a Maltese trotted past with its owner. Just the presence of a dog was enough to soothe his rising tension.

A wave of calmness washed over me and after it happened I was like, wow, that was really powerful!

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Fiorillo began researching the logistics of incorporating a dog into the delicate practice of funeral services. Lulu the Goldendoodle officially came on board the team in May of 2015. Like many dogs, she instinctively senses where, when and how she’s needed most. Fiorillo told NBC Today:

She’ll park herself right next to an older person to let them pet her one minute and the next she’s prancing around with kids. It’s been really impressive to watch.

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Lulu is a calm, sturdy beacon of support for those whose lives have spun suddenly out of control. Her presence allows otherwise stoic men to weep, and gives brokenhearted children the chance to laugh again.

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Fiorillo also takes comfort in Lulu’s companionship. The funeral services profession is highly stressful and very emotional. Sometimes a replenishing hug from Lulu is just what he needs to help him release his own emotions and better serve his clients.

Humans need to touch. Even just petting her can be a subtle distraction from the tremendous amount of grief people are going through.

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For those who take comfort in spirituality or the belief in a higher power, Lulu’s ability to “pray” is astonishing. Chelsea Sules lost her 25-year-old brother on June 17. Her grief was stifling, but within minutes of meeting Lulu, she found herself laughing once again. She told NBC Today:

Lulu was with us for both of the wakes and out of nowhere we see her kneeling on a bench with her head down and praying in front of my brother’s casket. It blew us away.

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Want more Lulu? Visit the Ballard-Durand Funeral Home on Facebook to see more photos and inspiring messages of hope in the face of loss.

Complete Article HERE!

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What I should have told my dying friend

By Shannon Molloy

Clare Atkinson
Clare Atkinson passed away on June 22 from a rare form of cancer. Her friend, journalist Shannon Molloy, had so much he wanted to tell her.

The last time I saw my friend Clare was two weeks ago in a hospice in Melbourne.

For a place where people come to die, it was an unnecessarily sad old building with no warmth, no comfort. Just beige walls and dull furnishings.

Terms like “palliative care” weren’t hidden away here — but instead, displayed on signs with arrows pointing the way to the sick and dying. There, among the mostly elderly patients, lay my 31-year-old dear mate.

Physically, she was a shell of her former self. Cancer had ravaged her body in 18 short months and left behind a confronting sight where vibrancy and a constantly burning energy once resided. Her stomach and legs were horrifically swollen, overrun with fluid as her organs slowly shut down.

But inside, her old spirit still glimmered.

“How are you?” I clumsily asked as I walked in. The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted them. How did I think she was?

“Well, I’ve been better,” she laughed gently. “Not sure if you can tell.”

I sat and held her hand, gently patting the bony and frail limb that once gripped a pen that wrote stunningly insightful words, and held a microphone that powerfully conveyed compelling pieces, here and abroad, for radio and television. Her remarkable but brief career in journalism seemed a million years ago in that moment, as she slipped in and out of consciousness and struggled to speak.

Like so many of the times I’d spent with her after her diagnosis, words failed me. I said nothing of the consequences at this meeting — the final one I would have with her, as it turned out. Just words to fill the silence, a forced smile painted on my face.

What was there to say anyhow?

Clare Atkinson, with the writer Shannon Molloy, had an inspiring love of life.
Clare Atkinson, with the writer Shannon Molloy, had an inspiring love of life.

I know now. I should’ve said that she’d been a wonderful friend for the past 11 years, from the moment we were introduced at uni and set about reviving our student association together — a task from which a cherished and close friendship was born.

I should’ve said that I’d always admire her and, truth be told, that I envied her; that I was proud of all she’d achieved — more in a third of life than most of us could dream in a whole lifetime.

Perhaps I could’ve told her that she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, with not an ounce of malice in her bones.

I might’ve asked if she was frightened. She didn’t seem it, but I would be. I’d be angry too — furious at how unfair the situation was, that she was just getting started. Why was now the time she had to face this awful, daunting thing?

I should’ve told her that I’d rather selfishly become determined to live a better life than I had before, for her, I suppose. To be more adventurous, to take risks, to love, to be a good person, to be less concerned with the small and trivial things, to stop stuffing around… all of the things she had been, even before her own mortality presented itself at 29.

I should’ve shared all the many fond, happy memories I have of our antics — most of which flooded my mind the moment I stepped away from that small, depressing hospice room.

There was the night of drunken deep and meaningful chat about our futures at an end-of-year uni social.

There was the early morning SOS call after a fight with an ex-boyfriend, when I collected her from a darkened street and took her to McDonald’s for sundaes and a long whinge about stupid boys.

There were emails back and forth after she moved to Germany for work. There were excited Facebook chats when she later came home and met the charming man who’d become her husband.

There was a night — now quite funny — when we danced wildly inside a club while our unlucky friend was hit by a taxi outside. She was fine, just a bit bruised. And now, whenever we hear an ambulance siren, we announce that her cab home has arrived. Well, we did.

And of course, there was that day in early December 2014 when she dropped a bomb. She had cancer, it was terminal and it was very rare and very aggressive.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else, and so I left it at that and let her speak.

On reflection, I said nothing of real consequence at any stage. I couldn’t. My role was to remain the funny one, I reasoned, to be her brief light of relief from the heavy burden of the rest of her new existence.

I told jokes, brought her old photos, suggested podcasts and books, shared funny stories about diva celebrities I’d encountered through work and generally tried to keep the mood up. In reality, I was scared to confront this thing that was stealing my friend away from me, from her family, from her adoring partner, from the rest of her mates.

I was terrified that if I was to drop my guard that I might cry, and I might never stop. And that would be selfish in light of her struggle. And so I kept the cancer chat light, treating it like a deadly elephant in the corner of the room, and tried to make her smile instead.

There was a day a few months ago though, when I went to see her and she was in a reflective mood. We spoke for several hours about the old days, about the years since, about life, and she said something that still rings in my head.

“If I could go back to the beginning of my life and choose not to have the cancer, but to miss out on everything I’ve done, in exchange for something far duller, I wouldn’t do it,” she told me.

“Because as shit as this is, I’ve had an amazing life. It’ll be over too soon but I’m pretty happy with it.”

In a rare and unfiltered moment, I was as candid as I could be without losing it.

“You did real good,” I said. And she had.

She lived how we all should live — fiercely, bravely, enthusiastically and like her life depended on it — long before it actually did.

And when it’s all said and done, isn’t that a place we all hope to be when our time’s up?

Clare Atkinson died late in the night on Wednesday June 22, peacefully and surrounded by her loved ones.

It was just days after she was able to return home from the hospice to her lovely, bright bedroom, with views out over the city.

Clare Atkinson on her wedding day with husband Lewis Rowland-Coman.
Clare Atkinson on her wedding day with husband Lewis Rowland-Coman.

You can donate to the Clare Atkinson Memorial Fund, supporting the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s research into cancer of the unknown primary (CUP).

Complete Article HERE!

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How To Bury a War

As the last Holocaust survivor in our family was lowered into the ground, a generation was laid to rest.

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How do you bury a war?

You start at the Tom Sawyer diner in New Jersey. You sit with a gaggle of relatives, all impacted by their parents and their fists and their fears and their grief. You order matzoh balls and you order cobb salads. No one asks for the bacon held. There are tuna melts and there is cream soda and everyone is American now. This is the beginning.

Once full, and after a funeral where Orthodox Jews and random strangers, where people look like they came, as your uncle will quip, “from central casting,” or Amish country, will gather, you won’t know who they all are.

An old man with a walker will slither across the stage and talk about the stock exchange, about the way the dead played numbers. She, the carrier of war. She, your great Aunt Rayya. She, the very last of the witnesses of the Poland that brought all of you into being. He will cry and glow and make it clear he fell in love with her and her great mathematical mind and you and everyone else will cry without understanding anything.

You will drive in a procession with cousins and aunts and parents and uncles. You will want to climb out of the car even though it is moving.  The graveyard will swallow you into its maze, your parents will play Russian roulette on gravesite discovery — using their “intuition” to find your grandfather’s grave and leading you back to the Paramus, New Jersey highway. No one, without Rayya, will have a compass anymore.

This day, this burial, this earth, this six feet under will mark the beginning and the end, the birth and the death, and you will stand there wondering why you can’t keep your diner food down as they lower her, and the war that shaped her, into the earth. You look at your father and wonder about how he is feeling. Free?  It’s over now, right? No more witnesses to the procession of relatives, no more evidence that they really came in with their bayonets, shuffled them all down a railroad track, and slaughtered everyone, almost everyone, that came before you.

It’s just that there is one way to bury a war and it involves generations and shovels. It involves saying no to the multi-ethnic burial crew with their bulldozers waiting nearby. It means no eating at the grave and gender separate prayer. It means a new order has not yet arrived. Burying the hole. Burying the gap. Burying a life, a woman, a stock market genius, a mystic, a mother. Burying a war involves generations and shovels.

One of your cousins, the circus performer, he is only 12. You will take him near you and note the length of his ponytail. You will whisper in his ear, shovel in hand, “Don’t worry, she left her body already. We aren’t really burying your grandmother.” The shovels are at work by now, in the hands of your bloodline, of their parents. They are passing shovels around.

As dirt thumps on cedar the circus-performing 12-year-old gets brave and grabs his shovel and joins the thud and the drop and the way the group has silently agreed not just to bury this woman but to bury the women and men she knew and that came before her. It is a silent agreement. You will collectively seal the tomb of an entire generation.

You take another cousin close to your chest. She will cry in your arms. You will have to hand your shovel to someone else.

“Did you know,” you will whisper in her ear, “that your grandmother’s family wasn’t ever buried?” You will want to tell her about piles of bodies, about a state-sanctioned memorial of piles of stones, of the way Poland tried to remember the dead with the names of towns or how ironically the Nazis were the only ones dignified enough to list the full names and addresses of their dead.

“This is for them,” you will say as she snots on your chest, as your stomach lurches, as you see your father as a parentless adult child with a shovel.

“This is a proper burial,” your cousin will whisper. “She would have liked this.”

Before you know it the grave is full. There is a mound on top. There is no more dirt to move. Before you know it, she is underground and her soul is no longer here and you are all the new generation with no elder witness. This is when you will oust the rabbi. This is when the gender norms will split. This is about when everyone wants more time at the diner.

“Over my dead body,” you will imagine her saying, about having men and women pray together. You will stand over her dead body and recite Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, alongside the aunts, all the uncles, the cousins, the strangers.

You will have to run. The bathroom will be your only friend and you will lose your entire diner lunch in one fell swoop. “You will wipe your face, the sweat on your brow.  “Sleep with me tonight?” You hear this as you crack open the stall door. Your cousin will want you in her mother’s bed, “I’m scared,” she says.

You will be sick again. You will slide into the backseat of your parent’s car and whisper, “drive.”  The war is buried now.  You can go home now.  Everyone is now for themselves, carrying what it left behind.  Everyone is now for themselves.

Complete Article HERE!

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‘Samseng’ son pens heartfelt poem as obituary for father

Mr Ong Tiong Yeow
Mr Ong Tiong Yeow with his mother Madam Han Boon Keng and his daughter Andromeda Wang.

SINGAPORE – Four hours – that was the time it took for businessman Ong Tiong Yeow to write his father’s obituary, a frank, heartfelt poem that has since gone viral on social media.

Four hours was also how long he took to pack his things and leave his family home as a 23-year-old, after his father Ong Peck Lye threw him out for standing up to him.

The elder Mr Ong, a wealthy rubber tyre businessman, died of pneumonia last Wednesday aged 82 and was cremated on Sunday (June 12).

He is survived by his wife Han Boon Keng, 82, a housewife, and three sons aged 46 to 54.

Mr Ong, 52, his second son, penned the tribute as a poem in first person, based on conversations he had with his father in his last days.

The verses depicted the complex humanity of his father, describing not just his charitable nature and flamboyance, but also his ego and conflicts with his family.

“I dared to live, and now I dared to die,” concludes the poem. “I am Ong Peck Lye.”

The obituary, which was in The Straits Times on Friday, was shared on Facebook by user Robin Rheaume and had garnered over 4,300 likes and 1,200 shares as of 8pm on Sunday.

Many were moved by the honesty of the poem, which admits that “My last days were dreary and weary” and that “I never got to see my father be/ A husband to my mother so/I made mistakes being both, trying to be as human as I know.”

The late Mr Ong was born in 1935 into poverty, fatherless from a young age. He worked his way from a slum along the Kallang River into prosperity after he co-founded the Stamford Tyres business empire.

He showered his children with privilege, but their relationships were complicated – at some point, he evicted each of them from their bungalow in Upper Serangoon.

Mr Ong said his older brother was thrown out after he converted to Christianity and married into a Eurasian family. His younger brother followed suit after coming out as gay. Both left Singapore, the oldest moving to Australia and the youngest to the United States.

Said Mr Ong: “My father died before he had the chance to ask my brothers to forgive him.”

He himself was ordered to leave when he fought with his father about the treatment of his mother.

He said: “The poem is also a tribute to my mum. My father bullied her, scolded her, kept mistresses – but she tahan (Malay for endure) until the end.”

Madam Han said in Mandarin: “We had good times and bad times. He was a generous man. I loved him and he loved me.”

Together, she and Mr Ong nursed her late husband through seven years of dementia.

Mr Ong said his father had asked him to move back home after a few years. “He got lonely,” he said.

He recalled returning laden with artwork from the beauty pageant franchising company he had set up, determined to show his father how successful he had been. “My father looked at me and said: ‘I don’t care about all this. I missed you.’

“After that, I did not leave his side again for 25 years.”

In the obituary, Mr Ong dubbed himself the “samseng” son, which is Malay for gangster. He said this was because in his youth, he was rebellious and did poorly in school. He was a prolific poet in his youth, having written more than 500 poems, though none were published.

When he was 16, his father bought him a pick-up truck and had him deliver goods after school from the godown to the docks. He would often have to go out to the ships and climb a few storeys up their sides to get the captain to sign the papers.

“He wanted to toughen me up, to show me the same hard life he had led,” said Mr Ong.

Mr Ong, who has a nine-year-old daughter, said he wrote the poem to share the lessons from his father’s life. “We have only one chance in life to be a husband and a father. We learn what we can from our parents, but we only have one chance to get it right ourselves.”

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Complete Article HERE!

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The Son of a Funeral-Planner Explores His Dad’s Grieving Process

by

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Jesse grew up observing grief. He learned the most about it from his dad, a man who seemed not to express much at all. Here is how.

Lou was walking alone when he died of a heart attack. He was my dad’s brother-in-law, but they seemed more like best friends. My dad was Lou’s best man in his wedding, they’d talk politics, and they played music together. So, when my dad was put in charge of Lou’s funeral, it was no surprise that it became a multi-act musical tribute. Lou’s kids played, neighborhood kids got up, my mom and I performed.

We held in our tears during the funeral, since we had to perform. But then the final act began. It was a recording of Lou on piano and you could hear him breathing. I think it goes without saying that the last thing you expect at a funeral is to hear the dead person breathing. And so mom began to cry. I began to cry. Outside, as the funeral let out, we supported each other, sobbing. My dad remained inside, arguing with the sound crew.

At that point in our lives, my family had been been playing in my dad’s funeral band for several years. This was the fifth funeral my dad had planned. But what started as a genuine attempt to honor the departed had become hard for me to understand. I wondered if somewhere along the way to funeral director, my dad had lost his ability to grieve.

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You could say it all begins with Johnnie. He was my dad’s older cousin and they were close. Johnnie was a charming kid who wore patches from yoyo competitions, did trick-dives off the diving board. When Johnnie would visit for the weekend, my dad looked forward to sharing a room.But there was also a darker side to Johnnie’s life. His mom was the daughter of a military officer and came from an abusive background, a tradition she seems to have passed on. There were rumors that she whipped him with belts and threw him against walls. When he was 1 year old, he had a broken leg, cause unknown.

Once Johnnie turned 18, he took off. No one heard from him for years, though snippets came down the grapevine that he had grown his hair out, discovered heroin. And then just like that, Johnny reentered my dad’s life. “I went out to one of the first fiddler conventions,” my dad told me, “and I got out there kind of early. I saw a guy dumpster-diving for food, and I took a closer look, and it was my cousin Johnnie.”

They spent the day together, talked about Johnnie’s family. My dad offered him a place to live and Johnnie accepted. But before long, alcohol starting disappearing from the house. I was a baby, my dad could be gone for long periods of time, and my mom, who had once dated an alcoholic, felt uneasy about the situation. “He had that, I don’t know how to say it, this jive, the lying, the part that I had been dealing with for so long with somebody who had that kind of addiction.”

My dad asked Johnnie to move out and once again he disappeared. From what we know, the rest of his life was spent doing odd jobs, battling addiction, getting arrested, and studying the Bible with a men’s Christian group. Then, on his 50th birthday, after relapsing, he went to Big Sur and killed himself under the stars. My dad took it hard. He asked Johnnie’s mother if they were going to have a funeral and she refused. She accused Johnnie of taking his own life just to get back at her. So my dad picked some songs, wrote a eulogy, and put on a funeral himself.

“Chat, rap, talk, spinning the yarn, that was Johnnie’s gift wasn’t it?” my dad’s eulogy began.

My mom and I joined my dad up front. We played an old folk song called “Hobo’s Lullaby” (I knew it because my dad would sing it to me before bed). The rest of the funeral went well. People stayed and ate dinner. Dad didn’t cry. He didn’t seem sad. He circulated around the room, calm, cracking jokes. But in the weeks that followed the funeral, he stopped singing “Hobo’s Lullaby.” When I’d ask for it before bed, he’d say, very nicely, “I can’t sing that song.”

I could tell something was going on for dad. I didn’t realize it then, but that song, “Hobo’s Lullaby,” was a brief window into my dad’s sadness. And then, just like that, it shut again.

* * *

A few years after Johnny’s death, my grandmother had a stroke and the process began again. This time the death took many months and my dad was put in charge of caretaking. Day by day, her body and mind broke down. He was by her side when she died. Soon after, we discovered that my grandmother had planned her own funeral. She not only requested specific songs, but specific people, including the family funeral band, to sing them. My dad arranged the performances and pushed us to practice. Then the day of the funeral arrived and to the surprise of everyone but my grandmother, 300 people arrived. We shook with nerves as we played. The audience clapped.

Afterwards, we packed the minivan with equipment and barely made the reception in the backyard of my grandfather’s house. People shook our hands and complimented us.

Once we played her funeral, the expectations were set. We played when my Uncle Tom died. We played when my grandfather died. And a funny thing happened, the more tragedy struck, the better we got. By the time Lou died, we were ready to really put on a show. But that window into my dad’s grief didn’t reopen and I was left wondering, once again, what was going on inside my dad’s head.

* * *

Years passed, we continued to play funerals. But as I got older, moved out of the house and struck out on my own, I began to resent my dad’s demands. I started dating, and I began to wonder why I had difficulty showing emotion. I knew it had something to do with my dad and that angered me. I decided: no more family band. I went on strike. And then a few more years passed, more dating, and I began revisiting the most important deaths and funerals of my childhood. And as I did so, I came to see my dad’s emotions, and mine, in a new light.

When I went to my mom and asked her about my dad, she told me something that happened to her the last time she was on stage. She is a very nervous person and when she’s performing with my dad, she searches the audience for someone she finds reassuring. But this time, during “Amazing Grace,” she did something different.

“I started looking around at different people and I could see that they were very moved. There was part of me that felt I did it right, using my own feelings to portray this song, to sing it, but also recognizing the effect my singing had.”

This got me thinking. Maybe, for my dad, performing is about experiencing grief. Maybe he can feel loss by seeing it in others; a kind of grief by proxy. Could that be it?

The final answer came later.

My girlfriend was driving and I put in a recording of the family band. As the music played, my parents’ voices coming through the tinny speakers, the emotion that swept over me came as a surprise. I felt proud. I watched my girlfriend’s face as the music played, hoping the music would bring tears to her eyes. “Listen to this one,” I said. “You can hear my uncle breathing. This one has my cousin on it.”

As I searched her face for a reaction, I remembered what my dad gets out of these performances. Yes, he feels pain and loss. He feels sadness. But it’s the performance that does that. It’s the performance that allows him to see his own pain through someone else’s eyes. And just like my dad, I was seeking this from my girlfriend’s reaction, this many years later.

And so, if I should lose someone close to me, here’s what you can do. Watch me play, let the music move you, and let me watch the music move you. Come up to me afterwards and let me shrug in modesty, crack a joke. Let me pretend I don’t care. But let me think, secretly: Yes, I’m the son of a funeral planner. Yes, I play in the Family Funeral Band.

Getting to know my dad in a deeper way allowed me to learn something about myself. We are not macho men, but we aren’t liberated men, either. Somehow, we learned to circumvent the emotional limitations of masculinity by performing our grief. It’s a work-around, we know.

It’s the best we can manage, for now.

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