Almost every evening—with the exception of most Saturdays—I walk from my office at the back of the building to the office at the front of the building. It’s always after 5:00 P.M. because the office at the front of the building is closed to public traffic at that point. It’s generally quiet, even if there’s a visitation, unless someone I know sees me and follows me inside.

Once the world goes away, I open the desk drawer and pull out the blank account cards. I settle myself into an office chair that isn’t mine—so I don’t adjust it to what I might consider a more comfortable position—and prepare to work on a computer that routinely belongs to someone else—so I don’t adjust the settings on the monitor even if I would prefer something different.

And then I tackle accounts receivable. New cards must be made, reflecting the choices of any families we have assisted that day. Additional charges must be added, often reflecting things they asked for that we could not immediately price, like newspaper obituaries or casket sprays when they had not yet visited with the florist. And then everything is posted in the accounts receivable book, which really isn’t a book at all. It’s a spreadsheet. It used to be a book but it could never be in date order since Death and the related expenses rarely ever fall chronologically. Balancing at the end of the month could be the devil if you ever had to compare every transaction with every card since you couldn’t hunt by date. You just had to scan every page and hope you found it. For once, technology has made life easier . . . sorta.

Tonight there is only one contract to record, only one family that had been in that day. I typed the date of death in the Date column and the name in the Name column. Then I tabbed over to the Debit column and entered the total. And then I stopped.

At that moment the name I had typed quietly begged for my attention. They had not asked for much in life except for comfort from their grief, and that never seemed to come. Now the name spoke volumes as it silently sat upon the page. It was a name I knew, a name with which I was, unfortunately, extremely familiar. The family had suffered far too much tragedy in recent months; they brought to mind my philosophy that there should be a five year moratorium on death once a family has been afflicted. No family should have to endure successive losses in brief spans of time. It simply wasn’t fair, not to mention being unbearable. As humans we can only handle so much, and this family seemed to have been given far more than their share.

As I looked at that name and thought of that family, my gaze moved upwards on the screen. There were more names—some that I knew personally, some that resonated only because we had served their family. And as I sat in the chair that wasn’t mine, looking at the screen I would not adjust, I knew that each name represented so much. Each name held a history all its own. Each name meant the world to someone, or several someones, or a host of someones, people whose lives would never, never be the same again because that one person was no longer with them.

We never know how many lives we may touch or how many people will mourn our passing. We never know when someone we love will leave our presence, never to physically return. Please, be careful with your words, thoughtful in your deeds. Speak freely with kindness and gently touch as many lives as you can, leaving them better than when you arrived. We are never too old—or too young—to leave this world suddenly . . . or to find ourselves left behind. Strive to live so that Death brings sorrow . . . but not regret.

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