I know that may sound strange. The person who died is the reason everyone is gathering. Their name is printed on the bulletin. Their picture sits near the flowers. Their favorite songs are played. Their life is remembered. But the person who died does not need help understanding what happened.
We do.
I have sat with families around kitchen tables two days after someone they loved had died. The coffee had gone cold. Someone was searching through a drawer for a photograph. Someone else was trying to remember the name of the song Dad always played in the car. Meanwhile, the funeral director was asking about flowers, folders, visitation hours, pallbearers, cemetery arrangements, and whether the family preferred the ivory casket or the slightly more ivory casket.
Nobody is at their best while comparison-shopping caskets under emotional duress.
Still, the decisions keep coming. Burial or cremation? Church or funeral home? Open casket or closed? Who should speak? What music should be played? Should there be a visitation? What would they have wanted?
And then, because grief apparently does not come with enough pressure of its own, the opinions begin.
“You have to do this.”
“You should include that.”
“That isn’t how our family does funerals.”
“People will wonder why you left that out.”
Apparently, death may end a life, but it does not end committee work.
Most of those opinions are well-intentioned. Traditions can be a gift. They can hold us when we are too tired to hold ourselves. They can give us words when our own words have disappeared. But tradition should serve the grieving family, not the reverse.
Over the years, I have come to believe that a funeral has two main purposes: to celebrate the life of the person who died and to help those who remain face the reality of their death.
It tells two truths at once.
Your loved one lived. They mattered. They were loved. And they have died.
A meaningful funeral does not choose between those truths. It holds them together. It gives the living somewhere to put their love, their gratitude, their disbelief, and their grief.
That is why there is no single correct way to plan one. The service should sound like the person who died. It should look like their life. It should carry something of their humor, their faith, their work, their quirks, their loves, their contradictions, and the stories people will still be telling years from now.
What made them laugh? What did they care about enough to argue over? What music did they turn up in the car? What did they cook when everyone came over? What phrase did they repeat so often that the whole family can still hear it in their voice? What did they keep in the garage, the kitchen drawer, the tackle box, the sewing room, the toolbox, or the glove compartment? What ordinary thing now feels sacred simply because their hands once touched it?
If a hymn, prayer, ritual, or family tradition carries meaning, use it. If it does not carry meaning, you do not have to include it simply because someone once decided that all funerals should follow the same script.
I have attended beautiful funerals in sanctuaries filled with hymns and Scripture. I have also attended meaningful gatherings in backyards, community halls, restaurants, parks, and living rooms. I have heard Bach, country music, gospel music, hard rock, and Sinatra played through speakers that crackled at exactly the wrong moment. I have seen military medals, fishing poles, quilts, recipe cards, work gloves, golf clubs, family photographs, and tools worn smooth by years of use.
None of those things were decoration. They were evidence. Evidence that a person lived here, worked here, laughed here, and left something behind here.
And sooner or later, nearly every question about what mattered to a person leads to the same place.
A story.
Tell the story everyone in the family has heard a hundred times. Tell the one about the vacation that went wrong, the Christmas dinner that nearly caught fire, the phrase they always used, the habit that drove everyone crazy, or the time they quietly helped someone and never told anybody.
Tell the funny stories. Tell the hard stories. Tell the ordinary stories. Tell the stories that reveal their kindness, stubbornness—or persistence, depending on who is telling the story—courage, flaws, faith, humor, and love.
Stories can do something a list of accomplishments cannot. They bring the person back into the room. Not physically. But for a moment, everyone hears the laugh again. They see the expression. They remember the voice. They recognize the gesture. They feel the love.
And then they feel the loss.
That is the strange and necessary work of a funeral. We laugh because it happened. We cry because it will not happen again. We give thanks for their life. We grieve their death.
A funeral is one of the few places where love and loss are allowed to tell the truth at the same time.
So when you are planning a funeral or memorial service, do not begin by asking what everyone else expects. Begin with a simpler question:
What will help us tell the truth about our loved one?
Then ask another:
What will help us face the reality that they are gone?
Whatever helps you celebrate their life or grieve their death has a place. Whatever carries no meaning for the person who died or the people who loved them may be something you can release.
Remember
Tell the truth about their life. Tell the truth about your loss.
One Step Forward
Choose one story that captures something essential about the person who died.
Write it down or tell it to someone else.
It does not have to be dramatic. Sometimes the most ordinary memory—the way they made coffee, folded towels, told a joke, waved from the driveway, or sat in their favorite chair—reveals more than a formal tribute ever could.
Consider This
If people carried one true memory of your loved one home from the funeral, what would you want that memory to be?
Until next week, remember: there is no single “right” way to honor a life. Tell the stories that sound like them, speak their name, and make room for both gratitude and grief.
Peace,
Tom
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