https://www.npr.org/2005/08/08/4785079/always-go-to-the-funeral

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Always Go To The Funeral As a child, Deirdre Sullivan learned from
her father to always pay her respects at funerals. Now, this NPR
listener believes those simple acts of human kindness are as
important as the grand gestures.
 
Special Series

This I Believe

Opinion

 

Always Go To The Funeral

August 8, 200512:00 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

By 

Deirdre Sullivan

Always Go To The Funeral

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[dsullivan2]

Deirdre Sullivan Nubar Alexanian hide caption

toggle caption
Nubar Alexanian

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get
out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade
math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. "Dee,"
he said, "you're going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the
family."

Deirdre Sullivan grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., and traveled the world
working odd jobs before attending law school at Northwestern
University. She's now a freelance attorney living in Brooklyn.
Sullivan says her father's greatest gift to her and her family was
how he ushered them through the process of his death.

So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought
it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line
deposited me in front of Miss Emerson's shell-shocked parents, I
stammered out, "Sorry about all this," and stalked away. But, for
that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss
Emerson's mother still remembers my name and always says hello with
tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been
taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course
for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals.
I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of
free mints and my father saying on the ride home, "You can't come in
without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral."

Sponsor Message

Sounds simple -- when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling
hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal
philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.

"Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing
when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of
it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to
and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that
represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy.
You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital
visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In
my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's
hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing
nothing.

In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make
a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small
inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional
calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death
from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek.
I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I
turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it
still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling
thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of
inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

Sponsor Message

Deirdre Sullivan grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., and traveled the world
working odd jobs before attending law school at Northwestern
University. Sullivan says her father's greatest gift to her and her
family was how he ushered them through the process of his death.

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