Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer

by Heather Lende

It’s not that misery loves company, exactly; rather, it’s that suffering, in all its forms, and our response to it, binds us together across dinner tables, neighborhoods, towns and cities, and even time. Bad doings bring out the best in people.

When Caroline asks if she can take my current favorite heart rock home, I say yes. I have faith that there are plenty more where it came from and that we will find them.

I really ought to vacuum. I should. But the only thing I pick up off the floor is a baby clinging to my pants. Brushing the fur and sand off her legs, I hold her close enough to feel her heart beating. Listening to the words my son is singing, I realize that I actually do know a couple of things now that I didn’t know when I was younger, and I’m so glad I acted on them as I happily survey the pretty good remodel of my once-perfect home.

Sure, I knew all along that no one ever demanded perfection in my household except me. I thought it was my job to keep it orderly and clean. I am good at that. Sometimes it’s easier to scrub the shower stall than have that heart-to-heart talk with your teenage daughter about the boyfriend you believe is not nice to her. Rather than keep on keeping on, living as I’d always done, it was time to make a few changes. I knew it wouldn’t occur overnight or even in a few weeks. Change is a process.

I have another friend who prefers to be a little grumpy but very neat, rather than cheerful and untidy. She’s pretty sure these traits are inversely related. I suspect she may be right because my house is getting messier in direct proportion to my growing optimism.

The old question should not be, is the cup half full or half empty, but, what will happen when that grandchild spills it? Will I moan or refill it?

told me that the key to her family’s affection for one another was simple: When they were angry they treated each other as politely as they would company. She was from Texas originally and had southern manners and grace. “Do you ever notice,” she had asked me when we were working on her husband’s obituary, “how we often say the most awful things to the people we are closest to? To prevent regrets in a marriage, with your children or in-laws, always say please and thank you and keep the thoughts you wouldn’t voice to company to yourself.” I realized if Stoli weren’t my child, I would know exactly how to support her. Funny how that works.

Mimi knows that it’s a mother’s job to draw the lines but it’s a grandmother’s job to remind everyone in the family that sometimes you have to move them, and, more important, what the cost of holding those lines might be.

I BELIEVE GRATITUDE comes from a place in your soul that knows the story could have ended differently, and often does, and I also know that gratitude is at the heart of finding the good in this world—especially in our relationships with the ones we love.

The secret to aging more cheerfully is to play like a child.

That day, I asked my father why a stupid truck had killed my friend. That’s the first time I recall hearing him say, “Life’s not fair. So?” He didn’t say it with any bitterness. He said it without breaking the rhythm of the toss and catch or altering the tone of his voice. Life is unfair. The ball soars up in the air and comes down. Sometimes you make the play, sometimes you don’t. So? You pay more attention next time, and keep your head in the game until the last out.

Look at how well Nelle, who organizes the liberal “We the People” group, gets along with Barbara, whose husband blasts them in regular editorials in his conservative online newsletter. They are both second sopranos and stand right beside each other, singing the same part. Half the time they share sheet music. This is what my friend Teresa is observing when she says that community life is spiritual boot camp. Because they enjoy singing, Nelle and Barbara swallow a little pride, practice a little forgiveness, and make a lot of lovely music that transcends, for an hour a week anyway, their opposing allegiances.

Some philosophers urge young people to march to their own beat, or dance to their own music. There’s a time and place for that, but I sure hope my grandchildren find a choir, and work to sing along with it. We may not be able to control when children throw up or a spouse leaves us or when one of the altos has a stroke between morning worship and the evening church potluck and won’t ever be returning for the dress shoes she left by the coatrack when she pulled on her snow boots. We cannot stop a once-vigorous running companion from shrinking inside a hospital gown and disappearing entirely, but we can keep on singing. This is how we give each other a little lift on low notes, and a smile on the high ones, or share the effort in those places where staggered breathing is the only way to make it to the end of the day.

The life you imagine doesn’t just happen while you are daydreaming about it on the drive across the country. It requires effort once you reach your destination.

to see beyond a person’s appearance so that without prompting or proof, she’ll assume the best, and discover most people have a pretty good story behind their cover.

Is this a woman thing? That we always think we could have or should have done more?

True love is above all reliable.

Do the other people I care about, the ones who may not be in my inner circle but who contribute to my well-being nearly every day, not know that, either? Do yours? What should we do? Be braver, and do as the poets and saints advise—string a few kind words together, and say them out loud. It doesn’t have to be a symphony or a eulogy. A country song will do. You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go is plenty.

This is why I insist on finding the good: because I know some truths, which have been shared with me by people at their most vulnerable, when their hearts are so exposed and raw that it takes all their energy to compose a few lines and pass a note under a closed door into my waiting hand. As an obituary writer, it’s my job to be part of Jeremy’s death and to help his mother remember her son’s life. But as a human being, I know that once hands are clasped, it doesn’t matter who did the reaching and who responded. The comfort is in the pressure of palm on palm, of heart to heart.

ROCKING LANI BACK TO sleep at two a.m., I feel her heart beating against mine, recall my own babies’ snuffling warmth, and am hit by a blue wave. The undertow of time is strong. I will never float this way again.

If I were to die tomorrow, would my grandchildren recall anything I’ve shown them about love and happiness? Would they even know what “find the good” means?

Find the good, praise the good, and do good, because you are still able to and because what moves your heart will remain long after you are gone and turn up in the most unexpected places, maybe even clutched tightly in the dirty little hand of a child running along an Alaskan beach. Everyone has heard of hearts turning to stone. But stones can turn into hearts, too. I know, because I’ve gratefully accepted those heart-shaped rocks, dusted them off, put them in my pocket, and carried them home.