Five funerals and a wedding


	Alan Bodnar, Ph.D. is the Co-Director of Psychology Training at Westborough State Hospital, Mass. and a consultant in the field of leadership development.

By Alan Bodnar, Ph.D.

One of the last decade's most popular movies was the romance, "Four Weddings and a Funeral," about the lives, loves and one sudden death among a group of young adults in Britain. The film was in turn hilarious, heartbreaking and touching in the way only the film industry can deliver in a neat, 90-minute package. With the recent passing of an elderly aunt, the same period of time in my own life yields the material for five funerals and a wedding, a common enough storyline for those of us in the growing ranks of maturing baby boomers. From the perspective of the twenty-somethings in the film, the age of more funerals than weddings must indeed be a grim prospect. Yet, when you get there, if you're lucky, it may not be so bad.

These were my thoughts as I sat among dwindling numbers of family and friends in the funeral parlor from which the remains of my aunt would soon be carried first to her church and then to the cemetery. I had not seen Aunt Helen in more than 30 years and my memories of her were the recollections of childhood adventures at her house with my cousins and brief adult encounters in times of family crisis or celebration. We are a family, like so many others, of weddings and funerals.

The memory board displaying photographs of Helen in her high school cap and gown, at her wedding to Uncle Buddy, with her children and grandchildren, and more recently, in the stands at the U.S. Open tennis tournament chronicled a long and full life. Missing were the tragedies that took away her husband, three adult children and their spouses through a series of accidents and illnesses to which she could only stand by and bear witness. Family and friends needed no reminders of the sad times. It was enough to know that Helen carried on in her close relationships with her grandchildren who were now celebrating her life and her love.

The funeral of a person who has lived long and died well shows a balance of grief and laughter, sorrow and silliness - an amalgamation of all the contradictions that constitute any life. In the presence of the deceased, talk turns to the most basic ties of family resemblance. Snatches of conversation from the row behind me reveal two sisters teasing each other about features each inherited from different family members. One definitely has Daddy's nose, while the other has Mommy's chin.

Cousins whose births I remember from my own childhood enter the room as mature adults with families of their own. Other mourners are second cousins who would still be strangers had this day not brought together the scattered remnants of what we call family. Now enter Helen's brother and sister, my youngest aunt and uncle and our band is complete.

Complete - perhaps that is what a full life yields at the end. The pictures on the memory board span a lifetime, but every photograph of an older Helen contains the essence of the younger person she once was. This is how we carry our experience with us. We are like trees that accumulate rings of growth containing the experience of the living organism through all of its seasons. Perhaps this is why, when we are reunited with old friends or distant family members, we feel an instant spark of connection that somehow manages to escape even the blurring effects of fading memory. At first, my cousin and I are not entirely sure we recognize one another but we instantly feel at home in each other's company. Somewhere deep within the cores of our life experience we are still the two children growing up on the same block. Her mother, my aunt, is still the high school girl who babysat for me. Our mutual uncle is ever the family's college bound pioneer.

Can five funerals and a wedding ever trump four weddings and a funeral? The wedding side of the balance needs no one to argue its merits but eventually the weight of the years tips the scale toward funerals. As occasions of memory, celebration, reunion and reflection, funerals are not without their benefits. Funerals give grief a voice and remind us of our own mortality, but they can also awaken the earlier selves that live on in the people we have become. As much as older people may envy youth, I don't think many of us would want to relive those years. As wonderful as it is to have your whole life before you, there is also a lot to be said for having it within you. A familiar prayer in my religious tradition ends with the phrase, "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be." Funerals remind us that our now contains our beginning. And as for that which ever shall be, it will take more than psychology to learn the answer.

Five funerals and a wedding (April 2008 Issue)

By Alan Bodnar, Ph.D.

Five funerals and a wedding
(April 2008 Issue)