Jay Jacobson

By Jay U. Jacobson The widow sitting across from me knew only one thing with certainty: she wanted her husband cremated. Beyond that, she was lost. His death had been sudden. Church had never been part of their lives, so a traditional funeral service did not feel right. Yet doing nothing did not feel right either. She was caught between convention and uncertainty, trying to make permanent decisions while still struggling to understand what had happened. I could have opened a service book and...

Adversity has a way of shrinking the room. When trouble first arrives, the world gets smaller. The calendar disappears. Long-term plans fade into the background. The next phone call, the next medical report, the next bill, the next hard conversation, the next breath, that is all you can see. I have felt that kind of narrowing. Most of us have. A diagnosis. A business setback. A failed plan. A family crisis. A grief that sits in the chair across from you and refuses to leave. In those moments,...

Every funeral home has stories. They live in the preparation room and the arrangement office. They travel in the hearse on the way to the cemetery. They are passed between experienced funeral directors and the young apprentice working their first visitation. They surface around the lunch table after a difficult service and sometimes years later when someone says, “Do you remember that family?” The question is not whether we have stories. The question is whether we recognize their value....