Funerals...

On where to find love and humanity thriving

I’m not sure anyone feels great about having to attend a funeral, but we’ll all most likely end up at one at some point in our lives. They may be difficult, but funerals also may just be some of humanity’s most shining moments. Maybe a chance to renew faith in the purity of heart in most humans. I’ve witnessed some of the finest displays of raw unadulterated emotional outpouring and connection, sometimes from those you wouldn’t even imagine had it in them. If you’re in need of remembering the love people are capable of being, go to a funeral.

My teenage daughter’s best friend recently lost her dad unexpectedly. We attended the funeral to support her during an undeniably devastating time. I didn’t expect to find myself in such a personally emotional space as I didn’t know her dad well at all. But what I was a part of that day in a mortuary chapel helped me understand something about the human heart. Something I deeply needed to remember and to feel.

Most of us protect our vulnerable emotions, tucking them away, possibly only allowing them to be seen in the most intimate connections. At a funeral the grieving are wearing their hearts outside their body, while apologizing for not being able to get through a sentence, as if crying is undignified. Really, the dignity of the dead is in their tears. A love you couldn’t possibly express through words, so words fail and crying takes over.

Quite a few men spoke during the service, honoring who her father was to them. Fathers, brothers, and best friends. They shared the most beautiful, unfiltered, honest love and pain. It was a moment in this brutal world where men could actually let their defenses down and bare their vulnerability to a room full of people whose only response was to saddle up beside them with tears and words of encouragement. The safety that creates can rewire this show of emotion from conditioned weakness to a dignified expression of love.

His father shared his pride and his anguish for a son he outlived. How does anyone carry a burden so heavy? I could feel, in that room, how everyone carried it with him in that moment. It is said that pain shared is halved and joy shared is doubled. At a funeral we get to witness this in action. His daughters, who will grow into adulthood without their father, shared the memories of his love and the gifts he bestowed on them. In an instant their lives changed, and their heartache is now engulfing. Through that unbearable pain, they shared love. And everyone shared it with them. The room was heavy with feeling and a oneness we don’t often experience with others.

Honestly, it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve had the opportunity to participate in. I couldn’t control the tears that flowed because my heart was fully present to all of it. I told my daughter later that it helped me remember what is real. What happened in that chapel is the only real thing that exists. The light of so many blasted open hearts is what suffering has the potential to gift us. The essence of humanity I often forget exists. Where will you experience people openly weeping while others hold them in a way that says we’re all in this together, our pain shared? Pain shared and witnessed is the healing balm we all need.

A funeral is one of the only experiences in life where all pretense is gone. Grief cares nothing for your protective image or persona. It wants your bleeding heart and nothing less.

I’m reminded of another experience that cements funerals as perfect examples of sweet suffering. About a year and a half ago, someone dear to me passed on. During her service I remember sobbing, trying to contain myself but unable to breathe. I had to just give in to it. I wept openly, in a way I would usually feel wildly uncomfortable doing. I was sad, yes, and I also wept because all the love I felt for her was flowing through me. All the while, people rubbed my back and held my hand. After the service, music was joyously played by the band and everyone danced as she would have wanted. There was joy in the pain, comingling without the need to leave one for the other.

The best word for what we see and feel in these experiences is purity. Filters are dissolved, fear of what others will think seems to leave us in peace for a moment, love and meaning for the one that is lost is profoundly overwhelming our system. We become a free flowing channel. One of the few times in our lives where we don’t obstruct ourselves with all the constructs we’ve taken on to live in “proper” society. It is also a time where we love one another freely and vulnerably.

If we look at all the horror in the world right now, we might be tempted to think that the heart of humanity has been filled with lead. But the truth is that right within all of that horror we are finding our hearts. Trick is we have to let ourselves actually feel freely. Funerals have shown me that the heart is alive and thriving. It just needs permission and safe space, support and encouragement. And then, wow, does it show up.

I’m left pondering how to translate this experience into my every day life. How to allow the intimacy of grief to open my heart in love as a daily practice. When we experience loss, we either open our hearts through the process of grief or we shut it down in an attempt to protect ourselves from intense heartbreak. But, if we’re really alive and living then our hearts are breaking open all the time. The more I’ve learned to feel the intense heartbreak that is woven into human existence (this comes with building up internal safety), the more intimate I’ve become with myself and the more I’m allowing myself to become intimate with others. Barriers are dissolving, so that hopefully I don’t have to wait for something like a funeral to contribute to opening the collective heart. What if everyone broke down those inner barriers? Salvation for us all might be on the other end.