Caleb Wilde
(218 comments, 980 posts)
Posts by Caleb Wilde
The Thing About Funerals: Most People Never Have One
Today’s guest post is written by Matt and Cheri Appling:
I’ve been to plenty of funerals. I’ve even conducted a couple.
We all eventually wind up at a funeral. Maybe it’s for a long-lived relative. Sometimes it’s a tragically unforeseen death.
We think that a funeral is a mandatory event on the way to the hereafter, if not for the deceased, then at least for the ones they leave behind.
But it turns out that, in reality, most of the people who have ever been born, never had a funeral. They were never mourned. Their pictures and obituaries were never in the paper.
Did you know that?
Because I did not, not until my wife and I started trying to get pregnant.
Pregnant For a Week
After a year of trying on our own to conceive, Cheri and I started pursuing fertility treatment. If you aren’t familiar with this, it’s kind of like an exercise program. You start small and work your way up, and hopefully you see results.
So Cheri had started hormone therapy and we started timing our…activities. And sure enough, within a month, the little stick had a plus sign on it!
Cheri went to the doctor to have it confirmed. Now, of course, that early on, she didn’t feel pregnant. And it’s not like the doctor could see the baby. They just measured the levels of certain hormones in her body, and like a litmus test, the hormones say “pregnant” or “not pregnant.”
A couple of days after the initial test, she went back to the doctor. Her hormone levels were still elevated, but falling. That wasn’t good.
And a couple of days later, her hormone levels were lower still.
A week after we discovered the pregnancy, she was officially not pregnant. We never told made any announcement. The tiny life never got to see the world, have a name, or be mourned by our friends and family. And it would take us three more years of ever-increasing treatment to see another plus sign on the pee stick again.
The Real Odds Against Us
What happened to Cheri is what doctors sometimes call a chemical pregnancy. And it turns out that there are many, many pregnancies that end the way our first one did.
The little fertilized egg doesn’t grow properly. Or it doesn’t find the uterus. Or something just isn’t right, and the woman’s body menstruates and flushes out the tiny little spark, unbeknownst to anyone.
It’s called spontaneous abortion and doctors think that half or maybe even two-thirds of pregnancies end in the first few days. For every one of us living here on Earth, going to jobs, raising our kids, thinking about our hopes and dreams, there are two, three or more little lives who were never even noticed by anyone, not even their mothers and fathers. They never had a birthday, much less a funeral.
Let that sink in. For each of us who get to live, who get to have a name and a family and a job and will get to be mourned when we are gone by the people who love us, there is a crowd of people who never have any of those things. The odds are ridiculously stacked against us before we even get here.
We would never have known Cheri was pregnant if we had not been looking. The little blob of cells passed away, unnoticed and unseen.
Gravestones As Milestones
In the years we spent trying to get another little blob of cells to stick around, we met a lot of hopeful parents. Some lost babies far into their pregnancies. It’s the kind of loss that cuts deeply, because you see the heartbeat and the face and it looks human.
And then we met other friends who could not even get past stage one. There were no lost pregnancies to mourn. They were mourning lost eggs month after month, year after year, because they had nothing else to mourn. There are no funerals for lost eggs.
None of us want particularly want to be at a funeral, because funerals hurt. But perhaps the next time we find ourselves at one, we can remember that a funeral is not just an end, but a rather elite milestone. For each of us who will have a funeral, who will have a cadre of mourners, there have been billions more who were never mourned. They did not have a eulogy or their favorite hymn sung in their honor. They did not get their name in the newspaper, because they never received a name from their parents.
A funeral is not something everyone gets to have. They are for the few of us who have actually lived in the conventional sense of the word. So maybe we take that to heart and be glad for the person who we are mourning.
And pay a moment of memory to all the people who won’t be mourned today.
*****
Matt and Cheri Appling are the authors of “Plus or Minus: Keeping Your Life, Faith and Love Together Through Infertility.” Find the book on Amazon or Matt’s blog at MattAppling.com.
Couples that Died Together: Five Stories
Kenny and Helen Felumlee were introduced when they were teenagers – by Kenny’s ex-girlfried. After dating for two years, the couple decided to get married. Immediately. Even though Kenny was only two days shy of his 21st birthday – the legal age for men in Ohio at the time – the pair drove to Kentucky to elope. They married on February 20, 1944, and spent the next 70 years together.
According to their children Kenny and Helen never spent a night apart even preferring to share a bunk bed rather than sleeping in separate beds on a trip. When Kenny became too ill to sleep in the bedroom, Helen slept on the floor nearby so they could stay together.
Helen Felumlee died on April 12, 2014 at the age of 92. Kenny Felumlee died 15 hours later on April 13, 2014 at the age of 93.
Sources: Zanesville Times Recorder and ABC News
CINCINNATI — When Helen Auer died on Wednesday, she was sitting in her chair. Her husband of 73 years came into the room and knew right away. Joe leaned over, gave her a kiss goodbye, and whispered in her ear: “Helen, call me home.”
Just 28 hours later, Helen did. Joe Auer died at the age of 100. His children figured he could manage one night without her, but not two. Wednesday they will have a funeral mass in front of the same altar where they were married in 1941. Married for 73 years, Joe and Helen Auer, of East Price Hill, died just 28 hours apart(
Said the daughter, “This marriage was a love story, but it was a real-life love story. Joe and Helen’s marriage survived because they loved each other and because they worked at their marriage and they shared a devout faith.”
To read more, click HERE.
Murdered Woman’s Body Pops Out of Casket
Via AOL:
According to WCBS, Brooklyn native Nequia Webb-Davidson was murdered by her husband last year, and a traumatic nightmare during the funeral has made her family feel like “she’s been murdered twice.”
According to a lawsuit filed against the J Foster phillips Funeral Home, Webb-Davidson’s casket did not fit in the grave, and when it was lowered into the ground it literally popped open, exposing her remains. When cemetary workers attempted to force the casket into the grave, dirt and rocks started to fall onto the body. The funeral was rescheduled for the following day.
The New York Daily News reports the family is suing the funeral home and cemetery, asking to be compensated for damages and emotional distress.
This is horrible on so many levels. Horrible that a family is burying their murdered daughter. Horrible that the casket popped open during the burial and horrible that the family now has added anger piled on complicated grief.
The funeral industry exists in such a high emotional environment that the smallest details gone wrong can create amplified damage. Real damage. Small details like accidentally forgetting to place a sister in the obituary; or getting the hair done wrong on the deceased; or overdoing the makeup, etc., etc.
Funeral directors are human. We make mistakes and our job is to minimize and rectify those mistakes as soon as we make them. Unfortunately, though, there are some mistakes that are simply too large to be minimized. And in those cases, the damage that we (often unintentionally) inflict on those like the family of Webb-Davidson is real and it deserves some type of rectification.
I hope that Webb-Davidson family can find some peace. And I hope the funeral home is gracious and humble and compliant.
Death and Love: 10 Funnies for Valentine’s Day
FYI.
Luv. Twu luv. 
The ever pragmatic Valentine’s Day gift. 
The even more pragmatic (and guaranteed to warm her heart) Valentine’s Gift. 
Nancy is bad.
Apparently this surprise-your-loved-one-with-funeral-stuff is a theme?
Nope. 
This is the card I wish my son handed out to his classmates.
If Arthur and Katherine were alive today they’d probably be watching “50 Shades of Grey” this Valentine’s Day.
“Just Cremate Me”
© 2010 Desiree Williams, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio
Today’s guest post is written by Barbara Kemmis, the executive director of the Cremation Association of North America located in Wheeling, Illinois.
One morning, my dad called me at work, which was a first. I was immediately concerned that bad news was coming, however it turned out my parents had made a resolution to “get their affairs in order.” They were starting the process of prearranging their funerals and updating all of their end-of-life documents. My dad’s plan was to have everything in order before I visited in a couple of months. My dad was calling to confirm that the funeral home he had chosen – Resthaven Funeral Homes – was a CANA member.
We get these calls and web inquiries all the time and it got me thinking: What does a CANA-certified crematory mean to the consumer? The funeral home my parents chose is well respected in the community and is a CANA member that proudly displays the CANA logo on its website and front door. The crematory operators are all CANA certified, which means they had gone to extra lengths in professional education. So I asked DeWayne Cain of Rest Haven Funeral Homes in Rockwall, Texas why he sought this designation for his business and staff, and what it means to the community he serves.
Dewayne and his staff serve hundreds of families like mine every year. Dewayne said, “CANA is considered the authority in training and certification for crematory operators. The outstanding CANA workshops, seminars and continuing education courses help my staff and me stay current on best practices for crematories. Rest Haven’s affiliation with CANA is important to me and to the families we serve, because it demonstrates our commitment to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism.”
When I visited my parents, we went to the bank and spent time reviewing documents – living wills and worksheets from the funeral home. Not surprisingly, my mom had planned a lovely funeral for herself at which her many friends from church and her social clubs, former students and others could gather together. My mom is a social creature known for her party planning. My dad’s worksheet simply stated, “Just cremate me.”
He explained that he didn’t want us to be sad or mourn him. He didn’t want a big deal made about his passing. He would be in heaven and we would see him again when it was our time. How many times have you had the same thought or a similar conversation with your friends or loved ones? My mom and I looked at each other and then looked away. I said what she couldn’t at that moment. “I love you, Dad, and I will mourn you and I will cry when you die. I need to be surrounded by family and your friends and former students. I need to hear about the practical jokes you pulled in the classroom and the stories of your leadership in the church and community. I want to respect your wishes, but I will mark your passing. I love you too much not to.”
Our conversation continues about their “affairs”, and has become much more than pre-planning a funeral. The agreement we reached is that I will honor their wishes to be cremated and the details of the ceremony and final memorialization will fall to me and other friends and family members.
