Funerals for Strangers
The Holes We Leave in the World
I’ve been to a lot of funerals, too many. The ratio of years lived to number of funerals is ridiculously lopsided, and I have a whole basket of neuroses to show for evidence. Newborns to nonagenarians and everything in between, loved ones, friends, and strangers. I went to one yesterday that was different in a really remarkable way.
You can learn a lot by watching people at a funeral. At most of them, if you look closely enough, you can see the new hole in the world. The shape and contour of the deceased becomes visible through the actions and words of their survivors. And there are so many different kinds of funerals:
The elder ones who have been sick after many, many decades of life, there’s almost a resolution. The chapters are over, the suffering is done, the book is closed. We knew their contours for so many years, they began to calcify and become history even before the departed left.
The traumatic ones - soldiers killed in action, folks lost by addiction, by violence. Everyone is stunned silent and leans on the structure of the funeral because they can’t stand up otherwise. Every person there knows that it is going to take years for their death to sink in before they can even begin to feel the magnitude of the pain (if at all). With the soldiers, your ears get fuzzy, and all you can hear is the trumpet playing “Taps”.
New babies - we didn’t even get to know their contours. At the funeral, the mom carries a palpable, sucking vacuum around her that terrifies and disorients everyone. The attendees of the funeral are at a complete loss and rattled to their existential cores. The baby’s loss magnifies the mom’s loss, and many attendees run from it, stuttering half-condolences, spilling drinks, leaving early.
No matter what kind of funeral it is, it can be difficult sometimes to gather the contours of the lost person because the attendees mostly talk about themselves - this is what they meant to me, this is why I personally will miss them, this is how my life will be different without them.
This one was so, so different in a really elemental way. I haven’t seen one like it before.
People from all over, ALL over had come on planes, trains, and by car to say goodbye to the guy. Every single one I listened to (there were hundreds of attendees) had a private, personal story between them and the departed alone - just the two of them, as though every one of them regarded the guy as one of their best friends. Through the day, quiet stories emerged about the stunning, selfless things he had done for the people in his community - things he would never list on a resume or even talk about. In addition to being tireless, he was humble.
The contours of this guy were immediately apparent, and only became larger and more luminous through the day. Remarkably, through the tears and ripping pain of fresh grief, people only ever talked about him. You could feel everyone’s affection and awe warm on your skin. Their celebration of him, their palpable love of him, made the new hole in the world grow and illuminate and become astoundingly detailed.
Listening to the others, I learned how passionately he loved the strange little details of life and how readily he shared these loves with the world around him. He surprised the people he knew with personal gifts all the time. “Larger than life” is a stupid and hackneyed phrase, but I think this might be a case where it applies. The guy I didn’t even know became someone I’d miss.
The enormous, glowing, man-shaped exit hole in the world showed me who had left, but far more, it told me what he meant. In his absence, you could feel gentle currents of air blowing his friends and loved ones into the future. His tailwind, with sparks in it, somehow fueled dozens and dozens of people to outwardly resolve to live more like him in the days and years ahead.
Even I want to live more like this guy, and again - I didn’t even know him.
May we all ride on Dan McQuade’s beautiful tailwinds into a life more like his. May his memory be a blessing to all of us.
+