They’re so young
I’m going to start out by saying that I’m not quite sure I’m ready to post about this.
In January alone, I helped the families of five young people. Me. Alone. One funeral director. One amongst the many in our funeral home and in our state. Five. Two were in their teens, one was early twenties, and two just barely in their thirties. Three were suicides, one a drug overdose (most likely NOT accidental), and the fourth was killed during a mental health crisis.
Unfortunately, I can honestly say I’m fairly good with suicide, that seems to be my niche. I’m comfortable with those situations and families. I’m good at talking with families about all the feelings and emotions that it brings, it’s a very strange niche to have. I am honest, I am direct, I am way too knowledgeable, and I can reliably speak from experience. Most families don’t know what to say or how to express what they’re feeling inside. This is where I’m good, this is where I excel. I know what words it takes to get that out and get it going. We start to heal by finding words. Part of me absolutely hates that I know how to do this. I don’t want to know. I want to be as clueless as anyone else about what to say to people who are grieving this kind of loss. I’ve been asked by friends and colleagues how to know what to say and I can’t answer that. It’s too personal. With all the training I can give and all the education I can impart on how to communicate with grieving families, the way one human speaks with another human on this kind of level is deep and personal and unique. It is a bond like no other.
Fortunately, these aren’t the kind of conversations and bonds I need to make on the daily. Not all deaths are this tragic. Thankfully.
But this past month has absolutely wrecked me. It takes a lot to wreck a funeral director. We are, by design, mostly unwreckable. But one day hit hard. I had two private viewings that day. In the morning, I walked the parents in to see their child, and stood with my hands on their backs while they cried and said over and over “why why why.” They weren’t questions so much as a berating of the world around them and of the fates that crushed their souls to shreds. I stood silently with them until their eyes hurt from too many tears and their hands sore from gripping the edge of the casket. In the afternoon, I walked another parent in to see their child alone. This parent had lost their spouse to suicide a year ago, and their own father to suicide years earlier. This was so so so so much for this one single person to take on alone. I stood at the parent’s side so they wouldn’t fall and answered question after question about anything and everything. “How was the child found?” “What was the child wearing?” “Where did the child point the gun?” “Why can’t I see the exit wound?” “Is it here?” “Can I touch it?” “Can I see the autopsy stitches?” “Did the child feel it?” Questions. Questions to grasp at anything this parent could hold onto. A grasp for some kind of smidgen of hope. Hope for what? Maybe hope that this wasn’t what their child intended and it’ll erase the reality of what they are witnessing. Maybe just hope for anything.
After I led the last parent out the door to their car, I came back in and sat on the couch in the hallway and cried. We buy Kleenex in bulk at the funeral home for a reason and it’s not just for our families. We are human too. And even though our cup is often like a magicians, magically eternally unfillable, sometimes our cup fills up with too much grief of others.
Those aren’t my dead. They aren’t my children. Their grief is not mine. But at this moment I was hit from too many sides, too many times, and I failed to dodge and weave correctly. So I sat, and I cried. I cried for the parents voices I still had in my head. I cried for the service coming up where I would have to be a funeral celebrant at which I would somehow need to make a terrible situation for another set of grieving parents and siblings bearable and yes, give them hope. I cried that it keeps happening. I cried that it all seems so hopeless. I cried that these things seem to cascade within communities and I didn’t know how I’d be able to talk to more parents next week. I cried because all of the little extra things I do (the handcasts in plaster, the special videos, the personalized products, etc.) they all seem so trivial and minute. I can’t bring these children back to their parents. ALL of these parents saw the darkness their children were experiencing and were unable to fix it for them. I cried because sometimes things just feel so helpless.
And I let myself cry.
Because what I NEEDED was to feel human and to allow myself the space to be human and to feel human emotions just like I let the parents. Sometimes I have to remind myself of my own training and give myself that much needed emotional first aid.
So I cried. And then after about five minutes I was done. I stood up, brushed myself off, cleaned up my face, went back to my desk… and called my next family.
*Side note: Since February has begun we’ve already gotten two more young people. I have told my colleagues that I am going to graciously bow out of helping those families (even though one is a family I’ve recently helped) so that I could give myself time. Without hesitation they understood, this is the unspoken rule amongst my team, we understand. And I will pick up the next one for them when they need it.
*Correction: I originally posted that I had four young people. I was incorrect, it was five. Damnit.
