A Karaoke Funeral

My Friend, Eric Butler is a Funeral Director, one of the finest I’ve ever had the privilege to work along side.

Eric has great compassion, superb skill and fantastic ways of companioning families through this early, painful grief work.

Eric has humongous humor.

In all of his years of service and expertise and mine as a funeral officiant, we’ve seen quite a lot of change in the actual Memorial Service. More and more are wanting to use it as a Celebration of Life with many people contributing stories, thoughts, memories, comments. Often I’m a Parentheses

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Getting the Service started with a welcome and sometimes a short prayer. . .

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And concluding it with appropriate thoughts after everyone has shared.

Eric has labeled these: KARAOKE FUNERALS.

Out of all the many Karaoke Funerals I’ve had, I certainly had a most unusual one lately.

The Funeral was for a 46 year old lady who died of a heroin overdose.

As just described, I opened the service by thanking everyone for coming out to celebrate and remember
“Mary’s” life and asked if anyone would like to share a thought, a memory, a story, a comment.

(I knew that her sister was going to say something and possibly Mary’s daughter and some friends).

It was Mary’s sister that stood up and began the celebration of her sister’s life with:

“Let me tell you about my sister, Mary. She was a drug addict, an alcoholic, a prostitute, a murderer, a liar, a cheater, a mother, a sister and a friend. . . .”

She went on for the next 45 minutes describing in painfully vivid detail all of the above. She acted as her own Master of Ceremony for this event, bringing up others to share or to read.

She was NOT going to be stopped, not even when Mary’s two sons (to two different fathers) got up and walked out.

She read from her double-typed manuscript of attempts to get Mary out of jail and into Rehab and out of Crack Houses and into apartments.

She read about the blown or totally missed opportunities, the lies, the debauchery, the waste, the guilt, the shame, the ugliness, the desperateness, the failings, the hopelessness, the hatred and then, and then she spoke of the love.

What I thought was her ending was just a long pause to collect herself and then weep and cry and finally just sob through the most important part of Karaoke Song.

She spoke of how other addicts and prostitutes would seek her out and never be turned away without being helped, comforted or delivered from a Hell she would never leave.

She spoke of how when everyone else would give up on her, she would never give up on others, or even her family.

Finally she said, “Mary gave us all more reasons than we could ever count NOT to love her. . .but, but she’s my sister, she’s a drug addict, an alcoholic, a prostitute, a murderer, a liar, a cheater, a thief, a mother, a friend and my sister.”

And then she sat down beside her husband and cried not so softly in his shoulder.

Oh yeah, it was hear-the-pin-drop-on-a-plush-carpet-Q-U-I-E-T. . . .

It was time for me to stand up and be my customary:

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Hmmmmmmmmmmm. . . .

“Out of all the things Mary was,” I began, “. . .a drug addict, an alcoholic, a prostitute, a murderer, a liar, a cheater, a thief, a mother, a friend and a sister. . .it’s clear to me, just by all of you being here this afternoon, the greatest thing she is, is loved. . . .

A Rabbi once told me that if nothing good could be said about the person who had just died, it was often said, “One day the Messiah will appear.”

He did. . . .

Robert Frost once said that all he knew about life could be summed up in just three words: “IT GOES ON.”

It Does. . . .

At this Karaoke Funeral that’s the Song that was Sung, heard and experienced.

Still is. . . .