Handling the Hard Cases
Roger F. Miller
For all the good things we can do for families in the hard cases, we can do just as many bad things — and that's the challenge.
Roger F. Miller
It was the kind of situation that gives clergy tremors.
A local funeral director called me to arrange a graveside committal service for a former resident of our community. I didn't know the person. He had been living halfway across the state for many years but had relatives still in town who were marginally connected with our church.
"The service will be simple," the funeral director said. "Just some Scripture readings, words of committal, and a prayer. Only the immediate family and a few old friends will be at the cemetery."
The wind at the cemetery whipped the trees and tested the ropes securing the burial canopy. Topsoil from the plowed field adjacent to the graveyard blew into our hair and the creases of our clothing as we waited for the hearse and the cars carrying the family.
The appointed hour came and went. No body, no family, no motorcade — but people, lots of them! The "few old friends" that began gathering ten minutes before we were due to start had swelled to a crowd of over a hundred. One person said to me, "I'm so glad they're having a funeral service here. I wasn't able to see the family earlier." Suddenly the brief committal service I had prepared seemed woefully inadequate.
I also noticed many of these so-called old friends weren't so old. In fact, they were nearly all in their thirties or early forties. Through some delicate conversation with one of them, I discovered they were contemporaries of the deceased. This is no old man at the end of his natural life! I thought.
Pulling the funeral director aside and whispering as quietly as I could, I began a vigorous interrogation. ...
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