At mid morning we left Eagle River Wisconsin.  The drive took some hours, the last segment approaching Milwaukee in a driving downpour.  Reason dictated that we pull over and wait until the dark clouds overhead had passed.  How many times in my life, have I dared circumstances risking serious injury or death by keeping the course?  We drove behind a semi with very bright tail lights at 60 mph, in what visibly appeard as a tunnel of spray, and falling water.

I am sure that death is at hand more often, and closer than we realize.  Death is shattering when it arrives.  We love life.  There is no “I” only “we.”  We only learn language, speaking and writing by hearing, mimicing and eliciting a response from others.   We learn how-to-live by the help and good graces of others.

When someone who has taught us, been a companion, traveled alongside us passes, dies, we are shattered for quite some time.  A piece of our world falls away, and we struggle with disorientation.

These were some of my thoughts while returning from Eagle River.  I reflected upon the funeral, the ritual of good-by enacted in one of the large rooms at the funeral home.  Death must be accepted, and perhaps we do as a matter of our reason.  It’s beyond dispute that all living things die.  Yet the acceptance is unspeakably difficult because we are so connected.  Death is an aspect of life, and though we have many ways of viewing death, when death visits, we struggle for words, for words strong enough to hold onto.  We stammer, speak ineptly.  Silence is often the best that we can come up with.

Words spoken at a funeral are helpful or unhelpful according to the frame of mind and heart of each one who is present.  I do not believe that words are magic, because I do not believe in magic or incantations.  Words may bind us together though. They may bind us to those who have passed on.  We remember them and we honor their kindness on our behalf.  And when we do,— all of that time and space is sacred……

Here are some magisterial words spoken in the presence of death by John Donne.  Would not these words be enough preface, to all of these stories that should be told by mourners upon the passing of a loved one?

---

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

JOHN DONNE, (1572–1631) Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, no. 17, pp. 108–9 (1959). Originally published in 1624.