This is not how you want the funeral director to begin a discussion with a room full of middle schoolers and their parents. That was three years ago so I prepped the crew this year. Funeral directors rarely have filters. Life is way too raw for them so they don't coat stories with protective coverings.
Our tour on Monday was much tamer. It is still the unfiltered tour of the embalming room, crematorium, and refrigerator room. There are always follow-up conversations after this tour.
I try to be upfront with parents that catechism class is about connecting faith to all of life so we talk about poop, sex, jail, work, birth and death. Or better yet, we go on field trips to explore all these aspects of life except for sex. Hmm. I don't think they are allowed in Mystic Treasures so you all are safe.
The most phone calls I ever got from middle school parents was after the Hooters fiasco - NOT MY FAULT! We were in Toledo touring the mosque, Orthodox church and synagogue but we split up for lunch and the sweetest older woman took the crew of boys. She had no idea what they were asking. I'm sure they told her how good the food was and when they got back and I was a bit irritated she did tell me how good the food was.
She also accidentally left a crew of kids at a random diner in a random town off the freeway instead of the agreed upon Denny's. Long story. Before cell phones. I came close to panicking. Misplacing three children is definitely a bad thing.
I work with folks in a setting where people expect you to be nice and make everyone happy. Okay. Maybe the expectation that I am nice was quashed years ago at the church, but only recently have I been able to abandon trying to make everyone happy. That's a hard one to give up as a pastor and I would argue as a woman of my generation.
My biggest way of trying to make people happy is saying I'm sorry. I am quick to take responsibility for all of life around me, even the stuff I can't control. I annoy myself with how often I say it.
My corrective is slightly twisted so I need to work on that too. After something happens I say, "I'm sorry" and then "I'm not really sorry, that wasn't my fault" and then "I'm sorry it happened to you, but still not my responsibility."
See it just gets awkward. So I've discovered my true Lenten discipline is to only say "I'm sorry" when I mean it. There are times that I'm hurtful and I need to take responsibility for that. But there are lots of times accidents happen or life happens or people get mad at me and I may experience sorrow because I care for them, but I don't need to heap it on my shoulders and pretend like I'm Atlas.
We don't really have a good phrase in English when we want to express solidarity in sorrow without taking responsibility.
Maybe something like,
"I'm sorry that you are uneasy confronting your twelve year old son's desire to see hooters and eat hot wings."
"I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable talking about dying with your teenager."
"I'm sorry you are angry because I refuse to get choir robes."
"I'm sorry I left your kid in a diner playing with straws for hours while we searched for them." See, I really was sorry for that one.
The rest just sound snarky. I suppose I can be sorry that someone is responding and feeling the way they are to a situation without taking responsibility for the situation.
The best I can do is live as honestly and openly as possible and trust the people around me to respond as they need to. Sometimes that is calling me on what an obnoxious and hurtful person I am. Sometimes that means the folks I love experience some disgruntlement and discomfort that I shouldn't try to apologize away.
I'm going to wean myself off the excessive "I'm sorrys". I'm actually thinking of replacing it with, "Do you all know what necrophilia is?" That's much less awkward. Or maybe move to Canada where they say "sorry" all the time.
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