Personal Note: Moving Past Grief

I've lost a lot of people over my lifetime.  It's the perils of living in a small town, I guess.  I've attended a lot of funerals, officiated a handful more, and dealt with grief both as a person trying to bring comfort to others and as the mourner.  It's a formidable life experience to deal with the nearness of death, to see someone close to you slip past the veil of life and into the "after," whatever your conception may be here.

Recently, I've dealt with a lot of this and had to preside over the services of those close to me.  Granted, they were people of a generation older than me, which allows me the distance of relative "youth."  It allows me the cool remove of "I have time," but that too is a lie, a trick of the mind to push away the reality of death.  So, lately, I've been thinking a lot about what comes next, what survives death for the living?  The answer to this is Hope.  Yep, captial "H" Hope is what I land on.  But where does one find it in the midst of darkness, in the throes of depression?  The answer is simple.

It is everywhere.

For the depressed and grieving, this may appear to be a snide remark, a flippant response by someone who doesn't understand the depths of his/her personal pain.  I know. I've been there.  As a young man, I dealt with a lot of darkness, a lot of personal pain, and it  effected me deeply.  It may be that those early experience wore against my heart like an ill-fitting shoe, leaving a callused patch of skin that now protects it, but I don't think so.  It is my firmly held belief that I chose my way out.  I chose the path I wanted to take out of the darkness and I've been becoming a better man ever since.

Hope is everywhere, but it is a matter of choosing.  Many people in the throes of grief plunge themselves backwards into the river of time.  They exist on the edge of memory, looking backwards toward the past, and because of this they are unable to sometimes experience the pleasures of the present, the promise of the future.  One way is to choose to turn your gaze.  This is a Herculean effort at first.  Shifting one's gaze toward the present, toward the future, sometimes feels like a treacherous act, an abandonment of the person we love, but it is far from that.  I've been reading the book "Dreams of Gods and Monsters" lately, the final book in a trilogy, and two of the characters keep bandying around the idea that the dead do not want vengeance from their survivors.  The survivors are the ones who want vengeance.  This caused me to think about my recent experiences with grief and some grievers who are close to me.

Photo courtesy of Linda Thomas

Here's my revision of the idea.  The dead do not want our tears, our grief.  They want our fond memories, a place in our hearts, and our enduring love, but, more than anything, they want our continued happiness.  In all of my experience with death, I've never met a dying soul who wanted anything more than that last piece.  I've lost grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, classmates, mentors, etc.  In all of those experiences, I've never known a one who wanted their loved ones to endure the prolonged pain that is grief.  Not one.

So, how do we find the hope?  How do we move past this stagnation of forward movement, of minutes ticking away from our own lives?  We choose to...tentatively at first.  We venture outside ourselves and choose to have one good visit.  One good afternoon with your child, your grandchild, a friend, a loved one of any stripe.  We get outside of ourselves and we invest in another.  This, for me, has often been the easiest way to move past grief.  Give yourself fully to another.  Invest in them, give them your time, attention, and help them to navigate whatever troubles they may be experiencing.  When I do this, when I reach out into my community, into my social circles, I typically get swept up into a current that draws me forward.

Photo courtesy of Jodi Sunitsch

As I get swept away, I begin to make connections to things outside of myself and my grief.  I begin to learn and discover new things.  I get surprised, which causes me to emit a bark of a laugh, a thing which is also a surprise and can sometimes set me backwards in my momentum because I feel that sense of shame that I am rediscovering joy in the face of my grief.  But, one laugh typically leads to another, which leads to another.  A friends laugh will remind me of my lost loved one, or something they say will stir a memory in me, and it will soon not be tainted with a sense of shame or guilt, but it will remind me that my loved ones would have sat right by me given the chance and they would have laughed just as long, or just as loud as I did.

Soon, my emotions shift from lamentations to celebrations.  When I remember my loved ones, I remember them fondly, which is usually accompanied by a story, and I start to tell the stories.  In this way, my loved ones get what they want, what I stated earlier.  They get my fond memories, they get a place in my heart, and they get my love.  In the end, I also get something too.  I get a new strength, a new way of moving forward, a new understanding of the beautiful bittersweet majesty that is a lived life.  I get this because they left me.  I get this because they loved me.  I get this because I loved them back, and I wouldn't trade that for any other material gift anyone could give me.

In this way, our grief is a gift, for it tempers us into a stronger version of ourselves, and that strength is built directly upon the life and memories of the people we had the courage and blessing enough to love.

Official Notes: Kyle's 5 Tips to Officiating a Service

In the year 2003, I got ordained online.  My friends Amy and Dudley were getting married and they had asked me to officiate.  In Montana, there is a law where anybody can marry one couple one time.  I figure this is a law left on the books from the days of traveling pastors.  If you had a shotgun wedding situation on your hands, you couldn't wait for a holy man to roll through town.  People had to get to the business of marrying.  Not trusting my friends' comprehension of the law, I decided to get ordained online in order to make sure it was official.  My life has not been the same since.  Little did I know, this decision would wind up being one of the most formidable of the last decade.

Being asked to officiate someone's wedding or funeral is a wonderful honor, one that is deserving of a degree of decorum and intention.  As such, here are a few tips for those of you who may find yourself in the same position, or simply giving a toast/eulogy at one of these services.

A Family Letter to the Bride

1. Prepare.  

Do your research.  It is easy to think that you have a solid grasp on the people/person you will be honoring with your words.  But I warn against assuming too much.  Even when I performed my brother and sister-in-law's wedding, I sat down with the two of them and interviewed them about their relationship, about how they met, and what they hoped for from their wedding vows.  It's easy to think you have people pegged, but this is one of the most precious days of their lives.

If you are performing a funeral service or giving a eulogy, it is especially important to interview the survivors.  They may have specific things they would like you to highlight over the course of the ceremony and it is critically important to respect the wishes of the survivors in order to accomplish the mission of the day.

2. Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Help

When I prepare a wedding ceremony, I turn to several titles for inspiration.  I use the books Weddings from the Heart: Contemporary and Traditional Ceremonies for an Unforgettable Wedding, Into the Garden: A Wedding Anthology, and Words for Your Wedding: The Wedding Service Book.  A person does not need to feel like they need to go it alone.  There are a lot of conventions of weddings that are helpful to observe.  Without having ever performed in this capacity, it would be hard to discover these conventions on your own.  There are many ways one can observe the conventions of a wedding without being traditional too, so you don't need to feel like these resources need to be confining.

I have often needed these resources in the process of getting started.  Once I get the general framework of a wedding ceremony written, or the gist of a celebratory toast, then I'm off to the races, but beginnings are hard and I need some inspiration at times to get myself going.  Sometimes it is simply a well written phrase that snaps the couple into focus.  Sometimes it is simply a poem or a story.  Whatever that piece of inspiration is, use every resource available to you to find it.  There is no shame in asking for help when you need it.

My Friends Ty and Britani's Wedding

3. Find the Centerpiece

Every ceremony I have ever performed, whether it is a wedding or a funeral has found a centerpiece.  For me, the centerpiece is the central idea, the main sentiment you want to leave people with.  It is also usually the last thing I discover in the process of drafting the early ceremony.  I can work on a rough draft of a ceremony for a long time, writing and rewriting sections for what feels like days, but it never even begins to feel complete or whole until I find the centerpiece.

Sometimes it is a poem that snaps things into focus for me.  Sometimes I simply need to write and rewrite until I capture a specific aspect of the couple's relationship, or the person's life, that feels right and true.  Once I have this centerpiece, the rest of the ceremony is written around it.  Most of the time this is an aggravating process because I want to get down to the business of rehearsing, of polishing the ceremony, but it is important to sit back and wait for that moment of clarity, that moment when you see the arc of the ceremony, the trajectory of the person's life, and manage to capture a piece of it in words.

The thematic centerpiece can be the most elusive element of the officiating task, but it is also the piece that will make the ceremony memorable to the audience and special to the people involved.  There's no real way around it.  It must be found.

The Happy Couple - My Brother and Sister-In-Law.  Picture by Jeff Lockhart

4. Balance

Almost everyone I know has attended the wedding or funeral where the officiant has taken an altogether solemn tone.  When dealing with a funeral, one expects it, but I have seen it take place at a wedding too.  Both events are solemn in their nature and deserve the respect of an officiant who understands the day's importance, but there are other sides to life, to marriage, even to death, and the officiant would do well to incorporate a degree of balance into any service they perform.

It can be easy to find the levity in a wedding, the comedic story in the life of a new couple.  Awkward first dates are ripe with material, sometimes proposal stories provide the necessary lightheartedness.  A groom's nervousness when approaching the institution of marriage can lead to a belly laugh as long as it is not embarrassing to the man's pride.  The blushing bride's initial apprehension of the young man she learned to eventually love can also be great material.

It can be harder to find the levity in a funeral, but I would argue that it is almost more important in this situation. When we say goodbye to our loved ones, we need to have a break from the weight of our grief.  The best way I know how to do this is to capture a moment that shows the lighter side of life.  I have almost always found this moment in the interview process with the family.

I can't remember where I heard it, but I remember getting writing advice concerning dark subject matter.  What the person told me was that a reader can only sustain a certain amount of trauma before they will put the book down in search of a break.  If an author doesn't provide that break, that moment of levity or humor, then a reader will abandon them.  The same holds true of the attendees at a funeral.  Find a way to provide them a little relief from their grief.  Find a way to provide them some small comfort, even if it is only by providing a brief moment where they can smile or chuckle.

My Brother and Sister-In-Law's Wedding.  Picture by Jeff Lockhart.

5. Enjoy Yourself

Like I said earlier, it is easy to get caught up in the solemnity of the event, to take yourself too seriously.  The reason you've been tapped, more often than not with non-religious officiants, is because you have some relationship to the couple (in the case of weddings) or the deceased (in the case of funerals).  It is a grand honor, and you should revel in it.

Even with funerals, I enjoy officiating the service.  Yes, it is a hard task, and, yes, I often break down and cry in public, but I still enjoy what it is I do. I get the chance to say goodbye to a loved one.  I get to find the words that will send them off into the next phase of existence, no matter what you think that might be.  I enjoy this moment, and I make sure to feel it when I officiate funerals.  Many people keep their grief bottled up inside, but I am provided the opportunity to let mine go, to send it out into the world, and, maybe, to allow someone else to get a little closer to their own grief.  Not a bad day's work.  So, when I say to "enjoy yourself," that's what I mean when it comes to funerals.

Weddings are much, much easier to have fun with.  Make jokes, dance, have a ball.  That's what weddings are for.  They are an affirmation of life and the ceremony should be a reflection of this.  The ceremony should send the couple into the next phase of their life with a sense of joy and affirmation.  Make sure you bring that to the table when you are putting together your portions of the ceremony.

If you pull it off, if you relax and have fun with the couple, then you are giving them a gift of a memorable wedding day.  You slow down time for a moment by allowing your words to wash over them, and you make them take stock, if only for a moment, of what the day means.  Then, you launch them out into the world to discover what life will bring them.  It's a fabulous place to stand,a fabulous view, when the bride and groom turn to face their family and friends, and you get to announce them for the first time as a married couple.  I've done it almost 17 times now, and I don't think that part ever gets old.  So, make sure to take the time to enjoy yourself in that moment.  If you are having fun, odds are so is everyone else.


These are just a few things I try and think about before I head into a funeral or a wedding.  I hope you find them useful.  These ideas have gotten me through 17 weddings and a handful of funerals.  I learn more and more with each one, so this may not be my last word on this issue.