This blog is similar to the previous one….I have a bad tendency to not blog for several weeks, and then get on a role, and not be able to stop.  Bare with me, or exit the site at any time….Otherwise, please keep all hands, feet, arms, legs, teeth, hair, and toes inside the car until it comes to a complete stop.

     Having been a church sound person for nearly 14 years now, I have been a part of COUNTLESS funerals and memorial services, and by that, I mean in the upper hundreds.  I have seen everything from age-induced death, lightning strike victims, cancer victims, murders, terrorist bombing victims, suicides, etc.  Over time, I have developed a numbness to the event, which is really both positive and a negative.  Positive, in the sense that I can get my job done, and focus on meeting the needs of the people in mourning.  Also positive in the fact that with so much hands on experience, I have lots of comforting advice to give to families, from seeing similar scenarios played out over the years.  However, sometimes it can have a negative effect, because I think the callouse that has built up towards deaths has made me seem insensitive.  It’s really not that I am insensitive to what has happened, because many times I have stopped to ponder "what if?", as I am sure many families have done over the years.  I think after a while, I just bypass that initial shock stage, and move right through the recovery stage and into the moving on stage, without even thinking about it.  Being part of the operational side of a funeral service has probably made me view it as a business transaction, or operational task more than a person’s death.  After helping lift 100-200 caskets out of a car, you forget that there is a brother, son, aunt, uncle, mom, dad, sister…in there.

However, a funeral I did last week made me give pause to a thought, like no other funeral has done before. 

The scene was typical, lots of black dresses and flowers everywhere.  A teenager, male, about 15, calmly left the living room where his family was, walked into his bedroom closet, shut the door, sat down, and shot himself in the head.  Unfortunately, a scenario I have delt with before.  In my mind, it was just another kid who thought he had problems, (how many problems do you REALLY have when you are 15?) and decided to provide himself with a long-term solution to a temporary problem.  But then, the boys younger sister by a year, got up, and read a letter that she had written to him after his death….again, something I had seen before.  It had all of the usual sap that you would expect from a 14 year old grieving girl…until about the 3rd paragraph.  My best paraphrase is this:  "Why did you have to do this!?  All I wanted to hear from you was ‘I Love You’, instead, I heard the bullet go through the wall, and I will remember that sound forever.  I thought we were closer than that!?  Why wouldn’t you let me help you?…"  She went on for several more minutes, but that one sentance rang louder than anything else she said: "All I wanted to hear from you was ‘I Love You’, instead, I heard the bullet go through the wall, and I will remember that sound forever."  What a statement.  Most times, parents would edit out graphic details like that before it got to the podium, but there it was, coming across the microphone loud and clear.

What was the last thing you said to someone you love?  I hope and pray that nobody that reads this blog would ever dream of doing something like this young boy did….but in a figurative sense, take a moment and think:  Was the last thing you said to him/her an "I love you", or was it a bullet?  Every day we get a chance to make sure that the last thing people hear INS’T the sound of a bullet going through the wall.  The voice of desperation or the cry of feeling alone is still better than a gunshot.  I hate to think that this boy died in vain, although it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel in these types of situations.  For me, his funeral service was a reminder for me to check up on my relationships, both friends and family, and make sure that no matter the situation, no matter the time, date, place or person, the people that I love KNOW that they are the people that I love….Because THAT is the sound I want them to remember forever…