Mourning with tears… and laughter

I may lose my readers over this one, but I am just going to spit it out and invite you to comment if you disagree.  We can disagree, can’t we?

I have attended two funerals this week and over the last two years I have done a lot of thinking about how I want to respond to the challenge that death brings to those left behind.  I know that I can't cry endlessly and continually relive these death experiences and call that living.

To be harshly realistic,  the death of a loved one is a commonplace event.  It happens every day in any number of ways to an endless variety of people.  Death does not seek us out uniquely; rather, death seeks us out universally.  No matter what PR firms may say in pharmaceutical ads, the human death rate is 100%. 

Whatever else the experience is, the loss of someone through death is  a call to live more fully and more boldly than we have ever lived before.   The experience essentially demands transformation.

Don’t get me wrong.   Death is sad and tragic and life-altering for those left behind.  We need to mourn.  But mourning is best described, I think, as the work it takes to build a new life.  Some of that work is tears.  Some of that work – a good deal of it, in fact – is laughter.