Be kind, be strong: Funerals illustrate absurdity of life

When John Curley’s kids were first born, he decided the family needed a motto to send their kids out into the world with. They came up with “Be kind, be strong, be funny when you can.” Each Monday, John Curley shares a story from the week of a person or event that he feels helps illustrate that motto.

Be kind, be strong, be funny when you can: Lessons from a funeral…

In the past two weeks, I have been to two funerals. When you are 5 years old, you go to a lot of birthday parties. But when you hit your 50s, the next big thing to go to are funerals.

Attending a funeral gives you an hour or an hour and a half to think. At one of the funerals, my son turned to me and said, ‘Dad, why the tears?’ And you remember John John at his father, John F. Kennedy’s funeral, standing there saluting. There were no tears because kids don’t understand the bigger concept.

I think the reason a person cries at funerals falls into one of three categories. I think we cry first for the deceased person because as they’re being eulogized, only the good is brought up. So the feeling is that the good is gone and that is unfair because the bad still remains. Think about all of the jerks who should probably be gone, but a good person is gone instead.

Then I think people also cry, of course, for the family that is left behind, the brother, the sister, the mother, the father who is left with the job of going through the chest of drawers and holding up sweaters, the favorite ones that smell a certain way. It’s their job to sit on the floor and take each piece of clothing out, examine it and remember it before it’s discarded. Or they make the room at the top of the stairs into a museum where the things that were just there, a stuffed animal, a trophy, suddenly have more meaning because the person who owned them is no longer present.

I think the final reason people cry is you cry for yourself. You might cry because you start to think this is the person who I let go to voicemail six months ago, or I know their birthday came and went and I didn’t bother to call. You cry for a kind of guilt. But then I think you also cry for yourself because you start to realize the absurdity of life. Here this person was working so hard to get something accomplished and then they’re gone and you’re left with this feeling of for what reason.

A funeral puts life in perspective and sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes that’s a bad thing. It’s only about an hour of your time and there may be crying. But whatever the reason that you’re crying, I think it’s very important that you’re there.

Related: Be kind, be strong: 17-year-old reminds us joy is worth more than points

Taken from Monday’s edition of The Tom & Curley Show on KIRO Radio.

JS