The intense emotions expressed at funerals can range from stoicism to uncontrollable sobbing and loud wailing. How do you handle the overt emotions of total strangers who have gathered in your funeral home to pay respect to the deceased?
The fact is, you can’t control them—not per say.
In a way, you are like a surfer riding a breaker as it speeds toward shore. Surfers cannot control the tide or the waves that propel their surfboard forward. They do, however, control the ride. By shifting their weight on the board and anticipating the currents, they guide the surfboard and keep up the speed so that they can ride the wave all the way in. Surfing demands training and years of practice to become skilled enough to delicately ride a monstrous wave, avoid being flipped and maintain that balance for the whole run.
As a funeral director, you are facing emotional energies as powerful as a crashing ocean wave. Just as waves rolling onto the beach are made up of individual currents that tug and pull in every direction, the myriad of emotions surfacing during the funeral service are antagonistic forces that will collide if not harnessed.
That is what you do—harness the emotions of the grieving family and friends during the service. Your goal is to direct their grief, however it is being expressed, into a joint tribute to the deceased. The service may not go as you planned. Occasionally, grief expresses itself in very inappropriate ways, such as hysterical laughter or heated arguing among family members. Don’t let your surfboard be flipped. Take each griever’s perspective into consideration as you cut through any waves of emotion that might cause the funeral to lose its momentum. You guide the event just as a surfer guides his board.
If one of the grievers becomes uncontrollable, seriously disrupting the service, you need to decide on the spot how to handle it. You may have to have a firm hand, perhaps guiding that person to a side room and allowing him or her to express grief energetically there. See if you can find a family member to sit with the griever until calmed down.
If the disruption is borderline, or the emotional outburst is coming from an immediate family member, you may want to pause the service for a few minutes and give it time to subside, then resume the funeral. Again, you are surfing unexpected currents and your judgment as each one hits your board determines the outcome.
Fortunately, most funeral services are more subdued. Even when your grievers are less expressive with their grief, you still need to harness their emotions in a way that honors their loved one. In that case, you can be the surfer that zigzags, encouraging survivors to get up and share precious or funny anecdotes, leaving everyone with rich memories of their loved one.
