Caleb Wilde
(218 comments, 980 posts)
Posts by Caleb Wilde
On Keeping Death Always Before Our Eyes
Today’s guest post is written by Micha Boyett.
I have this joke with my husband about who he’ll be allowed to marry if I die: Heidi Klum, of course. I want him to achieve all his life dreams.
Sometimes we laugh over which of his three brothers I would marry if we lived in Biblical Old Testament days and I was forced to carry on his bloodline (of course I would only get to choose between brothers because I’m making up the rules). I refuse to comment on which one I’ve chosen. I’ll let them arm wrestle for the prize.
The point is, we talk about dying sometimes. And we should. I don’t want it to be some taboo topic between the two of us. As a mom of two, it’s almost impossible for me to not think about the impermanence of all this life around me. My kids are growing at a rate I cannot believe. My oldest son is somehow almost six years old, and I feel the loss of his babyhood in the deepest parts of me. I have lost his infant-giggle, his chunky body, his cuddles, his toddler mind. Now, he is an almost-graduated Kindergartener with Kindergarten-sized friendship troubles, secrets, and frustrations that I can’t completely understand. He’s also learning to read and discovering his passion for science and nature. He’s developing a conscience of his own, working hard to persuade his parents that our love for eating meat is harmful to the Nature he loves.
In short, this is the story of every human on the planet. We live and grow and, one day, leave the care and nurture of our parents. It’s beautiful and it’s tragic. For every thing gained, another is lost. This is the work of Time: A Planet Earth whirling in its spot in the universe—day and night, day and night—bringing us to one another and removing us from one another. My son is growing up. I am losing him and gaining him—his real self—which, heartbreakingly for his mother, is separate from me.
As a person of faith, I first discovered the writings of St. Benedict because I was struggling with this notion of Time. I was a new mom, already feeling the simultaneous devastation and joy of motherhood. And I was also an anxious American, with a calendar packed full of stuff I ought to do and was failing to accomplish. When was I supposed to exercise/read/have a spiritual life when my kid was demanding me at all moments? I’d read somewhere that the Benedictine monks believe that there always “enough time in each day” and I wondered what that could possibly mean. (And I hoped they would give me some magic secret to getting control of my wild life.)
As I studied St. Benedict’s 6th Century notions of community and prayer, I came to an instruction that has remained with me, these years later. Benedict reminded his monks that they should live in such a way that they, “Keep the reality of death always before [their] eyes.”
What does it mean to live that way? Not with some morbid death obsession, but to notice that this moment—here, right now—is a gift? Everything is passing, and that reality is both beautiful and devastating. Somehow, the fact that we are always in the process of losing each other allows us, if we let it, to love more deeply. Recognizing our coming-death teaches us to cling to the life we’ve been given.
I’m not really sure what it means to live with the reality of death always before me, but I think it has something to do with gratefulness, with awareness. And I think that’s where prayer—however we define it—begins: in the place where we pay attention, see the people around us with compassion, and hold both death and life in the same tender hand.
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Micha (pronounced “MY-cah”) Boyett is a writer, blogger, and sometimes poet. Her first book, Found: A Story Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer releases today. A born and raised Texan, Micha lives in San Francisco with her husband, Chris, and their two sons. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, and at michaboyett.com.
When My Son Confessed to Murder
Today’s guest post is written by Tim Kreider:
I had thought I had found a path to healing and wholeness, but then, in May of 2007, one of my oldest son’s best friends and his parents were murdered in their home. It was a gruesome crime that instilled fear into our home and the entire community. Nothing was stolen. There were no clues and no leads.
Approximately 30 days later my oldest son, who was 16 at the time, was admitted to a local mental health facility because of threats of suicide. I feared the loss of his friend had been too much for him. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning.
During a family counseling session my son confessed to his mother and me that he was the one responsible for the death or his friend and his parents! Thus began the darkest and most devastating period of my life. The wholeness I thought I had obtained was shattered into a life consumed by pain and brokenness. There was a time when I thought I would drown in the wave of despair that washed over me.
Fortunately, I was eventually able to rise above the despair and find my way to healing and wholeness. This doesn’t mean I’m perfect and never have a “bad” day. I’m human. Events and people sometimes chip away at me. I have moments where I feel sad or down. I get angry at things I know shouldn’t bother me. I say things that shouldn’t be said.
But I respond totally differently today. I don’t stay there. The peace and joy I’ve found soon return. I recognize when my past hurt and brokenness rears its ugly head and I now am able to acknowledge it, respond to it and not allow it to derail my day, my relationships, my life and ultimately the joy I’ve found in life.
I believe that if I can do it, everyone can do the same thing. Their lives can be joyful. My intense conviction is that no one needs to be or deserves to be lost in the wasteland of pain and brokenness. If I can help just one person heal and become whole again, then I will have spared one person the continued pain of being hurt and broken. In doing so, I’ll improve not only their life but also the lives of everyone they touch. What a gift to bring to the world.
People ask me how did I do it? How did I find joy? How did I find a way to give myself permission to be happy again?
I wish I had an easy answer. I remember at one point in time asking a therapist, “Just tell me what to do to get better and I’ll do it.” He smiled and told me it doesn’t work that way. Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple 1 -2 -3 step to healing and becoming whole. Each of us needs to find our own path.
We may need to change our view of the world. Is our view negative and angry or do we find the best in a situation and approach each “obstacle” with hope? How do we change our view of the world? Start by filling your mind and environment with positive words, books and people. This may sound harsh, but if it doesn’t lift you up, it tears you down. Remove what tears you down and replace it with what lifts you up. I’ve read many books by self-help gurus and spiritual leaders that reinforced positive and life-altering ways of thinking and approaching life.
I went to counseling, seeing a psychologist and having a safe place to be broken and honest was incredibly valuable. He helped me understand the process I was going through and how events and people in life influenced my attitudes and actions. It enabled me to respond differently and in a healthier fashion.
I realized the incredible liberation of forgiveness – accept God’s forgiveness given to you, no matter what you have done. Forgive yourself for all of the “mistakes” you have ever made. Forgive those who have “wronged” you – parents, siblings, spouses, co workers, leaders, strangers on the street – it doesn’t matter who – forgive – let go of the anger and the pain. It only damages you!
When I was asked to share my passion for healing and wholeness, the task seemed overwhelming to me. Our search for healing and wholeness has been a quest of mankind since the fall of Adam and Eve. There have been lives dedicated to this quest. Volumes and volumes of writings have attempted to show us the way. Jesus came, taught, died and rose to share with us how to become healed and whole. Yet we ALL remain hurt and broken.
Yes, everyone is hurt or broken in some way. You’re broken just like the rest of us. But that’s okay. There is always a way back to healing and wholeness.
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Leaving Westboro Baptist Church
Fred Phelps died. A couple days ago, we learned that the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church – infamous for its hate filled rhetoric and base propaganda tactics – was dying; a fact that produced a number of us to reflect on Phelps’ life and feel some sense of satisfaction knowing that it was coming to an end.
Today, March 20th, 2014 he died. And news spread quickly. Social media sites like Facebook started to fill with vitriolic messages such as these (which I pulled from the feed on my Confessions of a Funeral Director Facebook page):
“Good riddance.”
“Finally. Just wish his church would burn down now.”
“This scumbag needs to rot in hell along with his whole family!!!”
I know the mental anguish that the WBC has caused grieving families. A couple years ago a childhood friend was killed in Iraq. His family entrusted his funeral service to us and it wasn’t long until we heard the rumor that the WBC was planning to picket his funeral.
As funeral directors, we wondered how people could be filled with such hatred and insensitivity so as cause compounded anguish to a family that lost their son, brother and fiancé at an age all too young.
Thankfully – despite the rumors that the WBC would picket the funeral – Brandon’s funeral was NOT one of the more than the supposed 53,000 events that Fred Phelps and his cult disturbed.
And yet, I can’t help but ask, “Isn’t this hatred that we feel towards him all too similar to the hate speech he stood for?”
We’re All Members
I’m not going to try and pull the old bait-and-switch and tell you that all of us are just as bad as Fred Phelps and his hate rhetoric. Neither you nor me have picked the funerals of fallen soldiers, protested the funerals of the children killed in the Sandy Hook shootings or held signs damning the LGBTQ community to hell.
Rather, I hope to point out the value of “I-Thou” relationships and reject the “I-It” objectification so embraced by Fred Phelps and his crew.
This leap from “person” to “object” is the one Westboro has made to justify their public, insensitive and often irrational protests of everything from pop concerts, to shuttle launches, to memorials for military deaths. But it’s the same leap that all too many of us make when it comes to judging others. We lose touch with the person we’re ready to stone and instead turn them into an “it” that represents a reprehensible and immoral idea or action.
On a larger scale, it’s the leap made when the people of Africa become slaves; when homosexuals become detestable; when women and children become sex slaves; when celebrities like Lindsey Lohan or Justin Beiber or Miley Cyrus become an object lesson on stupidity for the masses.
True, we make our own comparisons so we can uphold morality, proving to ourselves and those we influence that we all reap what we sow. We go above and beyond to avoid praising clearly unacceptable behavior in our Facebook statuses and our lunch break conversations. We eagerly pull down the celebrity cult to show the splattered blood of America’s gods.
But in the end, by turning a person like Fred Phelps into an object lesson or an object of our hatred we cross into the dangerous territory that’s traversed by Westboro time and time again. How can we be critical of a person like Fred Phelps, however awful his actions, while still being sensitive to those involved?
Seeing Person
As a funeral director, I daily tread ground that’s been hallowed by tears that represent the sacrifice of love and death. The casket is handpicked by the family, the body dressed with clothes that present the deceased at their best, the casket interior is strewn with pictures and tokens of remembrance, flowers are placed above and around the deceased. All who attend the viewing are dressed appropriately, with solemn faces and hearts. Grief is holy, and I’m privileged to enter the sanctuary—to enter the story.
Recently, we buried two young teenagers who were killed when one of them lost control of the car he was recklessly driving. He not only killed himself and two others, but marred the lives of all they left behind, who will live out the rest of their lives with the instability that tragic deaths inevitably cause.
We all too easily could think: “Those stupid kids got what they had coming to them when they were horsing around, driving like they were invincible. Let this be a lesson to you kids to be responsible.” You can say stuff like that when you don’t see the tears; when you don’t see capillaries that have ruptured around the father’s eyes from weeping, or the haggard, hollow look on the mother’s face as she sees the body that used to house the life and love of her now dead child.
These are people. Not object lessons. Not objects for hatred. Even the individual members of Westboro, with all their startling missteps, are people.
That’s what we miss when something becomes publicized or scandalized. We miss the humanity, we miss the story that brings color, texture, dimension and heart to the person. We see the lesson, the hatred, the “I’ll never be that guy”, and forget the life.
Rescinding Our Membership
There is no excuse for inhumanity committed by humans. But when we allow ourselves to see person, justice becomes the extension of love, rather than objectification and worship of law. When we see person, justice finds purity, impartiality and action.
When we see person, we begin to leave Westboro Baptist Church.
It is not our place to see others as reasons for God’s judgment and catalysts for our weekday sermons. It is not about separation of sin and sinner, nor a combination of the two. It is about a willingness to lose our fixation on “the other” as an object, and a realization that “the other” is just as real and human as you or me—whether they’re behind bars, beside a picket sign or six feet under the ground.
Ode to the Professional Mourner
Some are fair weather friends, who are there when you’re buying the beer. There to watch the game on your new plasma, but always “busy” when you’re moving that big piece of furniture or “stuck in traffic” when you need someone to pick you up from work when you happen to lock the keys in your car.
Fair weather friends, take notice of the Professional Mourner. Oh, Sultan of the Sulk. Helper of the Hurting, you’re there when the sky turns grey. You’re the wiping horse of the long day. You may not be around to celebrate a birthday or a wedding, but you’re the first one in line at a viewing, even beating the immediate family to the funeral home door. You’re the first one to shed a tear and the last one to leave the post-funeral luncheon.
You own stock in the Vatican’s Mass cards, and used all your vacation days to attend weekday funerals. The new BMW that the florist drives is single-handedly financed by the funeral flowers you purchase on a weekly basis. You may not even know the name of the deceased whose funeral you are attending, but you’re on a first name basis with all the morticians in the area. You collect memorial cards and prayer cards like they’re money and habitually ask the funeral director if that third story apartment in the funeral home is up for rent.
You, my friend, out dress the funeral directors with your gold cuff-links and silk color coordinated tie and handkerchief combo. Your greatest pleasure is when someone mistakes you for an undertaker. Sometimes, you don’t correct them. You just let them assume that you ARE an undertaker. You’ve attended more funerals than many funeral directors, so why not?
You own the shirt, “Free hugs” and are brave enough to wear it to Wal-Mart. Your tactile nature makes you a boarder-line molester in normal life, but a real life hero at a funeral, hugging everyone you see with a smile and an empathetic “I know”. The viewing line stops when you reach the family as you give each member in the receiving line a full measure of the comfort platitudes you memorized from grief.com.
Some buy one newspaper for the comic strips, but you buy at least three a day for the obituaries. You cut them out and laminate them, filing them like your tax records, and mailing the extras to your mother in Michigan. If there were a doctorate degree in obituaries you would have graduated summa cum laude. Master of the mourning. Comrade of comfort. You would rather be a pall bearer than get a promotion. Pal of the pall. Chum of the casket. You are the professional mourner. A true gloomy weather friend.
Grief Online: The Dos and Don’ts of Internet Etiquette
Today’s guest post is written by Dr. Candi K. Cann
Everyone seems to be online these days, and even if you are not on much, odds are that you have a Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr or Instagram account. With so much of our socializing done virtually, it is no surprise that we are grieving and mourning the deaths of our loved ones online too.
Here are a few Dos and Don’ts for grieving online.
• Don’t announce the death of someone online unless you are sure that the family, friends and anyone that should know about the death, knows already.
The most recent example of this was Wall Street Journal’s breaking news tweet on Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death. Both the death and the details of how he died were tweeted before his family was aware that he had died.
• Once everyone knows about the death, it is okay to post details about the funeral, wake, celebration of life ceremony online so that everyone knows, but please don’t create an Evite for it.
Evites are great for invitations — they are convenient and quick, but they shouldn’t be used in this case for three reasons:
1) They depend on the regular checking of email, and since funerals and memorials are generally held somewhat quickly, those invited may not get the email in time.
2) Evites sometimes land in the invitee’s junk folder, which means they won’t receive them, and funerals and memorials are meant to be open to anyone the deceased knew.
3) Evites are only for those that receive an invitation.
• If someone is posting a picture of themselves with the deceased, they are doing so to let you know they are grieving, so don’t write snarky comments on that picture.
Don’t do it. Just don’t. It isn’t the right time or place.
• If a family decides to leave a Facebook page active, a Twitter feed open, or an Instagram account on so that you can write comments, post messages, etc., please think about your audience.
Yes, we know you were Tom’s last serious girlfriend before his marriage, and probably the reason he finally got his act together to be able to commit to his wife and have children, but that doesn’t mean you should post old love letters or pictures to his webpage. His wife and all the rest of his family just won’t find it appropriate, and it might make their grief worse.
And yes, your position as ex-girlfriend means that you have a right to grieve, and that there is really no place for you to do so, but you will need to stick to your group of girlfriends, or maybe on your own private social media. While the Internet is awesome for giving everyone a voice, sometimes we need to think about our audience.
• Don’t write negative things about the dead.
Yes, your neighbor was a jerk, but if you didn’t say it to his face before he died, then it’s too late now. If you did, then he already knows how you feel, and there’s just no point in making his family and friends feel worse.
• Along those lines, don’t say anything negative about the living posting about the dead.
Yes, we are all getting tired of Katie’s sappy (and badly written, I might add) poems that she keeps writing and posting to her deceased best friend’s page, but please don’t say anything. Remember the old adage — if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all? Well, remember it. Or at least, if you must say something that’s not nice, then say it to a close friend who has never met Katie. That way you can be sure Katie won’t find out.
And last, but not least, those funeral selfies.
• If you insist on taking a funeral selfie, try to keep the dead out of the pictures.
There’s a reason some people don’t go to wakes or funerals — they simply don’t know what to do with that open casket. Or maybe they want their last memory of Grandma to be a living one. If you must take a funeral selfie, please make sure there are no glimpses of Grandma in her casket. It’s bad enough we have to see pictures of your cute cat five times a day, we really don’t want to see your dead grandmother before we’ve even had our morning coffee.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Candi K. Cann received both her A.M. and Ph.D. in Comparative Religion from Harvard University, and her research focuses on death and dying, and the impact of remembering (and forgetting) in shaping how lives are recalled, remembered and celebrated. An avid reader, traveler, and lover of poetry, her passions are spending time with her family and friends and living well.
You can follow Candi on Twitter and pre-order her upcoming book, Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century.
