My new book, A Beautiful Farewell, tells the story of a family navigating the loss of a parent and the funeral professional who became their guide. One scene in particular captures something I have been trying to articulate for years.
Mary and her siblings walked into David’s office, having already decided.
The funeral should be simple, private, and nothing too big. Their mother had said this after their father’s funeral.
They were not difficult. They were not resistant. They were doing what families do: honoring a preference they had been handed without fully understanding what it meant or what it ruled out.
David did not argue with the preference. He did not counter it or redirect it. He asked a question.
Tell me about your mother. Who was she?
The siblings looked at each other. No one had asked them this. Not in the twenty-four hours since their mother died. Not once. Everyone had asked about the funeral. No one had asked about her.
So they talked.
They talked about her steadiness. The way she showed up quietly for people without needing recognition. The herb garden tended every morning. The bird journals filled with careful observations over decades. The phone calls made at exactly the right moment. Small acts. Consistent. Done with love rather than fanfare.
David listened. He took notes. And when they finished, he reflected back what he had heard.
Someone who believed in small acts done with care. Someone who valued authenticity over show. Someone who would have been deeply uncomfortable as the center of formal attention.
The siblings went still. That was exactly right.
And then something shifted.
Because now the question of what to do for their mother was no longer abstract. It was not a choice between two options the culture had handed them. It was a question with a specific person at the center of it. A person they had just described in their own words.
The formal chapel was obviously wrong. Their mother would have hated it. But the gathering space with its clusters of chairs and natural light? The garden with its fountain and quiet shade? Herb plants for every guest to take home and tend?
None of those ideas came from a brochure. They came from what the family had just said about their mother.
The conversation created the space. The space made the suggestion possible.
This is the part that gets missed.
Families arrive having decided. But what they have decided is based on what they know, which is almost always a version of death care shaped by the culture rather than by the specific person they are trying to honor.
They do not know what else is possible because no one has ever asked them the question that would reveal it.
The question is not what do you want. That question returns the family to the frame they walked in with.
The question is, who was this person?
That question goes somewhere else entirely. It surfaces details. It creates texture. It hands the director the specific material she needs to suggest something the family could not have imagined before they sat down.
And when the suggestion comes, it does not feel like a sales pitch. It feels like someone was listening.
Because someone was.
Until next time,
John
P.S. A Beautiful Farewell is available on Amazon. It tells the story of a family navigating the loss of a parent, and the funeral professional who became their guide.