This week, I participated in a NEDA (National End-of-Life Doula Alliance) movie night to watch the documentary A Butterfly Has Been Released. The film follows Allyson, a hospice nurse living with terminal brain cancer, through the final 39 days of her life.

There was much about the documentary that stayed with me, but I found myself especially drawn to her living funeral.

It was joyful.

Friends and family gathered around Allyson while she was still there to receive everything they wanted to give her. They hugged her. They told stories. They told her what she had meant to them.

What struck me most was the look on Allyson’s face.

Joy. Peace. Contentment.

As I watched people embrace her and tell her how she had touched their lives, I started thinking about what we normally do at funerals and celebrations of life.

We tell stories.

We talk about the funny things someone did and the kindnesses they probably didn’t even remember. We share moments that reveal who that person was to us. And in doing so, the people closest to them sometimes discover parts of their person they never knew.

I’ve always believed that storytelling is an important part of grieving. It helps us build a fuller picture of the person we’ve lost. We get to see them through someone else’s eyes.

What I hadn’t thought nearly as much about was what those stories might mean to the person who is dying.

 

A Celebration She Would Have Loved

As we continued discussing the documentary the next day, I realized that what each of us took from it depended, at least in part, on what we brought to it.

I brought my mom.

My mom was never comfortable talking about the specifics of what she wanted at the end of her life. But she was very clear about one thing: she didn’t want people sitting around being sad at her celebration of life.

She wanted it to be joyful.

She wanted stories, food, and laughter.

So after she died, my sister and I did our best to give her exactly that. We rented a local shelter house. We had a taco truck and a crème brûlée truck. People came together, ate, laughed, and told stories about our mom.

One of my childhood friends shared something I hadn’t really thought about before.

She described my mom as the “neighborhood mom.”

When we were growing up, some of the kids in our neighborhood had mothers who worked outside the home. Some had rules that they couldn’t bring friends into their houses when their parents weren’t there.

But everyone could come to our house.

Their parents knew my mom was there, and they were comfortable knowing their kids were there, too.

To my mom, I’m not sure that would have seemed particularly noteworthy. Kids came over. She was home. Of course they were welcome.

But decades later, someone remembered it.

That ordinary open door had become part of how another person understood who my mom was.

That’s one of the gifts we received at her celebration. My sister and I got to see our mother through other people’s eyes and understand a little more about the impact she had made.

Several people told us afterward that the celebration felt like something my mom would have enjoyed attending.

At the time, I took that as a wonderful compliment.

After watching A Butterfly Has Been Released, I found myself thinking something different.

 

I wish she could have.

I wish she could have heard those stories.

I wish she could have known that someone still remembered her as the neighborhood mom all those years later.

I can picture her reaction. She probably would have been a little embarrassed by all the attention.

And I think she would have loved every minute of it.

 

Don’t Save the Best Stories

There was a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode years ago in which Albert Brooks held a living funeral for himself. In typical Curb fashion, he wasn’t actually mingling with everyone. He was hidden away watching the whole thing on television.

That isn’t what made Allyson’s living funeral so meaningful.

She wasn’t watching her life being celebrated from another room.

She was in the room.

She could see people’s faces. She could hear their voices. She could receive their hugs. And when someone told her what she had meant to them, she was there to take it in.

Of course, a living funeral isn’t possible for everyone. Death isn’t always something we have time to prepare for. It can come suddenly. Illness can progress in ways that make such a gathering impossible. And some people simply wouldn’t want one.

But maybe the lesson doesn’t have to be that we should all have living funerals.

Maybe the lesson is that we shouldn’t need one.

Think about what happens when someone dies.

We search our memories for the story that captures who they were.

We tell their children something their parent did years before they were born. We tell a spouse about a kindness their partner showed us. We tell friends about something ridiculous that still makes us laugh.

And sometimes we say the words we wish we had said directly to the person.

What if we didn’t wait?

Not just to say, “I love you.” Those words matter enormously.

But what about telling people why they matter?

Tell them the story.

Do you remember when you did this? You probably thought nothing of it, but I’ve never forgotten it.

You made me feel welcome when I didn’t know where I belonged.

You showed up for me when I needed someone.

Something you said years ago changed the way I thought about myself.

Maybe one of the greatest gifts of a living funeral is that it allows a person to see something most of us never fully get to see: the impact of our life reflected back to us through the people we’ve touched.

We don’t have to wait until someone is dying to offer that gift.

Think about someone you love.

Think about the story you might someday stand up at their funeral and tell.

And then ask yourself:

What are you waiting for?