Kindest words needn't be saved for the funeral

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Before Ronald Reagan died we were talking about wakes and funerals. Before we heard the news on the radio, before the tributes and the retrospectives and the state funeral. Before his biggest event ever, my youngest daughter and I were sitting at the kitchen table discussing how sad it is that the ultimate celebration of a human life doesn't come until after a person is dead.

The dead can't smell the flowers people send. The dead can't enjoy the feel of a new suit. The dead can't smile at family stories or laugh at old jokes or look at someone he's known his whole life and put his hand on his shoulder and say, ``I never knew you felt that way.''

Too many people get their first and only ride in a shiny limousine on the way to their grave.

It doesn't make sense.

Ronald Reagan was a movie star and a president and so people honored him while he lived. But as revered as he was in life, he is far more revered in death.

Why is this? Why are we so skimpy with praise for the living? Why are our eulogies always in the past tense? ``He was a great guy.'' ``I never met anyone as kind.''

Must a man be dead before we confess admiration. Must a person have stopped breathing to make us stop what we're doing? Look how we fly thousands of miles to funerals. Look how we skip work to pay our respects to people who might have been served better had we shown our respect sooner.

We live our lives the reverse of the way they should be lived. That's what my daughter and I concluded. We wait until it's too late to say a simple thing like, ``I love seeing you every day.''

Is it possible to celebrate someone not because it's a birthday or an anniversary or retirement? But just because?

When people are in trouble we intervene. Why can't we convene when they're not? ``Come join us to celebrate the life of . . .''

We need to pay attention to the living.

My mother was sick for 17 years before she died. We should have had a party for her. We should have invited all the old neighbors and friends who eventually came to her funeral.

``She was so good to me,'' they told me. ``She made me feel like part of the family.'' ``I loved her.'' ``I wanted to be like her.''

I wish they had told her.

We hired a bagpiper for my mother-in-law's funeral. She was from Scotland and the sound brought her home.

We should have hired him when the notes would have transported her and not us.

People are coming from everywhere and waiting eight hours in 90-degree weather to pay their respects to President Reagan.

Don't the living, especially the living we know and love, deserve as much?

I would like to have a party for my friend, Jill, pick her up in a limo and take her to some fancy place with flowers and all kinds of food that she didn't help make. Her family would be there and all her friends and she would spend an evening talking to everyone. And each person would tell her exactly how every day in countless ways she continues to make their lives better.

I would like to celebrate all my friends, and my children and their spouses, and my father and his wife, and my husband, and my neighbors. Because every one of them deserves the royal treatment, now, not later. Because every one of them would be softened - and strengthened - by the good things people would say.