Now Departing Quotes

“It’s the small things that one can laugh at when in a dark moment that make us smile in the midst of it all.
Today, the small thing that lightens the mood is neither kitschy makeup nor secret knowledge from having attended too many funerals, but rather movement toward the front of a church, the dancing that seems both out of place and yet very correct.
As Reverend Tom intones from the pulpit, “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance…,” I’m struck with the thought, as I’m nearly tempted to gyrate back up the aisle after depositing the casket and ushering the family into their pews, that maybe those ancient lines aren’t opposites, but realities that strike at the same time. It seems right that we can laugh and weep almost in the same instant. The two emotions sit right next to each other at times like these. It is a practice worth encouraging when reflecting on life or asking a family to share their stories. Both are needed and necessary, laughing and weeping.
And if it is okay to laugh and weep, why not dance and mourn?”
― Victor M. Sweeney, Now Departing: A Small-Town Mortician on Death, Life, and the Moments in Between