My daughter, Jess Callaghan died on January 22, 2015. She was twenty years old.
I have spent over two decades helping funeral homes serve families better. I have helped write the words funeral directors say in arrangement meetings. I have helped design the questions they ask, the frameworks they use to guide families through the worst moments of their lives.
None of that prepared me for sitting on the other side of the desk.
The arrangement meeting was tense before it started. My wife and I were there. So was Jess’s mother, my ex-wife, and her husband. Grief does strange things to people. It did strange things in that room. The funeral home owner, a former client of mine, managed it with a steadiness I still think about. He didn’t dismiss anyone’s emotion. He didn’t let anyone’s emotion take over either. He just kept the room moving toward something.
He started by explaining his role. He said we were standing on the edge of a huge chasm. That it was easy to fall in. That his job was to help us bridge it by focusing on the good, not the bad.
I thought…you’re still saying that.
Then he asked everyone in the room to describe Jess in one word.
Someone said fearless.
The room went quiet in the way rooms go quiet when something lands exactly right. Jess would walk up to strangers when other kids hid behind their parents. She tried things before she knew if she could do them. She met the world head on. Fearless was not just a comment, it was how she experienced life.
That word became the theme of the memorial, the eulogy, the tribute book. It gave us something to organize around when nothing felt organized.
He also gave us words for the question we knew was coming. When people asked what happened, he told us to say: right now we’re trying to focus on how she lived, not how she died. Simple. Clean. It moved people without shutting them out.
On the drive home, my wife was quietly repeating things the funeral home owner had said. The chasm. The focus on the good. The way he had held the room together. She wasn’t talking to me exactly. She was processing out loud, the way you do when something has helped you and you’re not sure why.
I said nothing.
At the church service, the priest told a story. He had met Jess years earlier, when she was ten. Most kids were shy around the new priest. Jess walked up and introduced herself. He hadn’t forgotten it.
After the service, she again brought up how the funeral home owner’s words had really helped her. I finally told her that I had written what he said. Not all of it. But the parts that had stayed with her. I had helped him find those words twelve years earlier.
She looked at me the way you look at someone when you don’t know what to do with what they just told you.
I didn’t know what to do with it either.
What I know is this. A funeral home owner learned something, held onto it, and used it on the day it mattered most. Not for a client. For his colleague’s family. For my daughter.
That’s what the work is for. Not the strategy. Not the revenue. It’s for the moment in the room when the right words show up and a family has something to hold onto.
I can’t always be in the room. But I can help prepare a moment so that it’s ready when a family needs it.
On January 22, 2015, I needed help. A former client was ready to give it.
That’s why this work matters.
More soon,
John