When Funeral Farewells Become a Regular Part of Life

Not too many people attended the funeral of my coworker Margaret, but I did see my pal Dennis Gallagher there. Dennis and I had a pleasant time exchanging nostalgic stories about our late friend.

A few weeks later, I went to the funeral of a colleague on a charity board—and once again, I ran into Dennis Gallagher.​ Maybe two weeks after that, another funeral. Dennis was at that one too.

As we were shaking hands, I made a poor joke: “Dennis,” I said with a chuckle, “we can’t keep meeting this way.”

His reply was immediate—and accurate. “Oh, we’re going to keep meeting this way,” he insisted. “At our age, the funerals of our friends are becoming a regular part of life.”

How right he was. Like other 70-somethings, I’ve found that the funerals of friends, classmates and professional acquaintances have become standard calendar items.

And to my surprise, I find that I enjoy them. Most of the friends being buried had long, fruitful lives, so these occasions are not particularly gloomy. And often, in the quiet church or synagogue, I find myself conversing in my mind with friends and relatives who have passed: my mom and dad; my sister, Dede; my wife, Peggy; even my Navy commanding officer, a guy who had a big influence on my life.

In some cases, these ceremonies involve nothing more than the standard funeral liturgy. But the better ones offer a look back at a life; sometimes there are slideshows to remind us of what the deceased achieved in a lifetime. The best life story I’ve heard came at the funeral of my friend Bob Sakata. ​In 1942, when Bob was a high school junior, the Sakata family was taken away from their California farm and locked up in an internment camp because Bob’s parents were immigrants from Japan. Bob, American born and bred — he’d never even been to Japan — was furious at this treatment. To get out, he finagled a job as a farmhand in Brighton, Colorado. The farmer assigned Bob to work 40 acres along the South Platte River. By the time of his death, 80 years later, Bob had 4,000 acres along that river, and Sakata Farms was one of the biggest growers of sweet corn, cabbage and onions in the Rocky Mountain West. As we left the church in Brighton after Bob’s funeral, his grandchildren handed out packets of corn seeds.