About two years ago I attended the funeral of a young man, “Ted,” whose wedding I had attended just two years previous. In the wedding ceremony he made a commitment not only to his new bride, “Beth,” but to her son, “Sam,” from another relationship. He pledged to be a healthy and fatherly influence in Sam’s life. Beth and Sam, together with their entire faith community, eagerly anticipated a new beginning for the three of them. In the months that followed the wedding, Ted descended into addiction, depression and he became verbally abusive to his new bride and negligent toward their son. Then, tragically, he committed suicide. This loss was very difficult not only because it was complicated by the act of suicide, a final rejection of wife and son, but by Ted’s poor behavior for the duration of their brief marriage. At the funeral, those who eulogized Ted talked about him as if he were the most outstanding person they’d encountered in their entire lives, even though they were aware of Ted’s unwholesome behavior toward Beth and Sam.
I’m not of the opinion that we should drag someone’s name through the mud at a funeral, but I do believe that it is important to acknowledge at a funeral that the deceased had deficits as well as admirable attributes and that these deficits, whatever the reason for them, must factor into the ways we are affected by the loss and how we grieve. That no one said a single thing at this funeral about Ted’s deficits had a profound impact on Ted’s wife, son and other members of the faith community. That these were entirely ignored set back the grieving process.
Someone could have said something like, “We loved Ted. The best of Ted was special. We’ve acknowledged some of the specific things we loved about him. But we must not ignore that he fell short in his marriage to Beth and as a father to Sam. We regret that and we’re pretty sure he did also.” It might also be appropriate for the eulogizers to say to the bereaved, “We are sorry not only for your loss and the manner of your loss, but for the challenges which preceded your loss.”
That should be sufficient and it would have helped Beth and Sam to grieve appropriately.
Next week: Living with an eternal perspective.