More ponderings about funerals and stories

A friend of mine thinks that writing about funerals is morbid. Blogs should be light-hearted he said. Well, it seems to me that funerals are about life and how we live it  and that is what I want to write about; the journey of life. So, today some more thoughts arising from the funeral I attended last week.

Aren't funerals very much about telling a story? It will be the story of one woman or man's life, her or his relationship to family, friends, colleagues and, from my point of view, God. I hadn't thought about this before; I hadn't really appreciated that until last week but then, it made perfect sense. We begin the story of our life with a not quite clean page (because we have in our genes a family history) but as we experience life more pages are written and are filled with the choices we make, the experiences that come to us, the relationships formed by us, the cultural and economic climate of our time and of course, many more things. All these are part of who we become and are when we die. At our funeral someone or a number of someone's tell the part of the story they know. And perhaps for the first time, people who knew only part of the story have a much fuller sense of the whole.


But then I wondered about the many people who have no one to relate their story, or people whose story is unknown? There are the street people, the lost children, the lonely and abandoned old, the mentally distressed who have lost all contact. Who knows their stories? Perhaps no one any more. I find that tremendously sad. Every single human being has a story, a story that makes their lives precious and unique and it is sad if that story cannot be told at their funeral at least.


In l'Arche communities where there are many folks who are said to have intellectual disabilities and who have in some way been deprived of the value of their story by society at large, there are the most wonderful funerals, the most touching celebration of a life lived often under extremely difficult circumstances. There is joyful music, there is a recognition of amazing humanity, and most of all, a sharing of memories and stories. It is healing for those present, it is healing for our world I feel.


All this reflection reminds me that we have to think about the stories before it is too late. What do we really know about the people closest to us? What do they know about us? How often do we ask people to share their story so that we can know them more deeply? Wouldn't it be good now, while we and they are still alive, to begin to story-tell? I am going to try to do that more often starting today.