Always Go to the Funeral

I was reminded recently of something my daughter taught me. It’s nice to have children who are mature enough to teach their parents life lessons.

Both my children came home for their uncle’s funeral in May. Actually, my daughter had been visiting, and merely had to extend her visit by a day to attend the funeral. But she did it, despite having an important work meeting the day after the funeral that she had to rush home to handle.

I commented when she changed her plans that it was nice of her to rearrange her schedule to stay. She told me she’d read somewhere, “Always go to the funeral.”

And she reminded me how touched we’d been when a high-school friend of hers came to my father-in-law’s funeral several years ago. We hadn’t expected to see this young woman, though this friend had visited my parents-in-law on a couple of occasions. The friend and my daughter had become close in high school, when they both were laid low by stress fractures during one cross-country season. They bonded in their boots. But for this young woman to take a day off work to drive 90 miles each way for a funeral of someone she’d barely known was above and beyond the call of their friendship.

Always go to the funeral.

I haven’t always been a follower of the “always go to the funeral” philosophy. In fact, I will take almost any excuse to avoid funerals. I go when I know the family mourners—being there for those who have lost a loved one is important to me. But when the deceased was the person I knew, I find it hard to mingle with their family members whom I do not know.

But I had an opportunity to practice what my daughter preached last week. While I was traveling, I happened to read The Kansas City Star one day. I even skimmed the obituaries—a habit I picked up when I worked in Human Resources.

This particular day, I chanced upon the obituary for a woman I had worked with for several years. The obituary was a short one, with no family details. I searched online to be sure the deceased was who I thought she was. When I verified her identity, I knew I should attend her memorial service.

I had maybe met her husband once or twice in the past, but I wouldn’t recognize him or her other family members. Still, her contributions in the office had made my life easier throughout the time we worked together, and I owed her an hour of my life.

I had another meeting scheduled for the morning of the funeral—a writing group that I enjoy, and I’ve missed too many of the group’s meetings in recent months and will miss more this summer.

Always go to the funeral, I reminded myself. And I canceled my attendance at the writing meeting.

The woman who had died was the mail clerk in the Hallmark Cards legal department where I worked for seventeen years. She started in the role a few years after I began there, and was still there for several years after I left. Though her position had little status and was not highly paid, the way she did her job kept the department running smoothly. She copied and mailed all the correspondence and other documents the attorneys and paralegals sent out. And in those days before electronic communications, we sent out a lot of paper.

I can recall many times when she caught the fact that I had forgotten to attach an exhibit to a brief or position statement I was mailing to a court or a government agency. And other times when I should have copied an additional party on a letter or memo, and she reminded me. This woman essentially served as quality control for our group. And she did an excellent job. She saved every single member of the professional staff from embarrassment on multiple occasions.

Many of the attorneys were stressed out over our workloads, and that stress was passed on to the support staff. As the mail clerk, she had to handle a lot of work late in the day, when we rushed to get things out before our deadlines. She usually took the bus to and from work, so she had a schedule to meet herself. It couldn’t have been easy for her to pay attention to as many details as she did day in and day out. We’d had other mail clerks who were abysmal at the task. But this woman did it—and did it almost perfectly—for about twenty years.

So I went to the funeral.

Yes, it was difficult to offer condolences to her family. She meant far more to them than she did to me, and I could not address their grief. But she meant a lot to me, and it was important to tell her husband and sons about the contributions she had made to our group.

I’m glad I went to the funeral. I only wish now that I had told her more often when we worked together how helpful she was and how much her diligence meant to me.

When have you attended a funeral because someone made your life better?