This I Believe
As a Funeral Director, I have spent over 40 years observing and forming a set of guidelines for my own beliefs. Hollow feelings are cast aside when a funeral director is called to assist a family, and as such:
?I have come to believe that the strength of the individual is an amazing thing. I have observed the frailest of elderly widows summon the inner strength to guide her middle aged children through the trauma of losing a father. She has lost a life partner ? but the strength of character that springs from the depths of her being is primal.
?I believe that children should not die before their parents, but when they do, a social support network is essential. Worldwide organizations are born of parents? needs for support at these trying and unfair times. I observe from a distance as some social networks triumph and others fail.
?I believe that there is a spark in every human being that cries out for nurture at the time of death. In death no one is solitary. I am a part of a community just as a grain of sand is part of the beach. I am part of a larger creation and the ripple that will be created when my soul drops like a pebble into the ocean of eternity will forever widen to an unknown shore.
?I believe in the journey. The journey of life encompasses so many people ? millions of people who don?t know my name, but I know it, and that is what?s important. I am here to journey, not judge. I have the ability to touch someone each day with the gift of listening, looking directly into their eyes as they speak, letting them know that they are the most important one in my life at that moment.
?I believe in love. I have been a guest at life?s banquet of sorrows and have seen love torn apart by death, only to be salvaged through the gifts of time and tears. Hope is the personification of love?s gifts. Hope is the reigning monarch in this, the creation of which I am a small part.
The glimpse that I retain as a Funeral Director is one of the most beautiful gifts that can be given. I have the chance to look into the mirror of other lives and see humanity stripped bare. I have become the sum of the total of all of their philosophies.
This I believe.
