By Jay Jacobson
Pictured at top: The author at age five with Aunt Judy.
There comes a moment for many of us in funeral service when grief stops being something we guide others through and becomes something we have to carry ourselves.
We know the language of loss. We know the sequence of events. We know the forms, the timing, the decisions that need to be made, and the thousand quiet details that stand between chaos and calm. We know how to sit across from families in shock, how to explain what comes next, how to steady a room when the people in it feel unsteady themselves. It’s what we do. It’s what we’re trained to do. For many of us, it’s become second nature.
But when death comes to our own family, something shifts.
This week, my Aunt Judy passed away. In the weeks leading up to her death, life seemed to slow down and deepen at the same time. There was sadness, of course. There was the ache of watching someone you love move toward the edge of this life. But there was also joy. There was opportunity. There was reconnection. There was reflection. Those days reminded me that the road leading to death is often lined with more than sorrow. Sometimes it’s lined with memory, laughter, unfinished conversations that finally get finished, and the sacred gift of simply being present.
And Judy gave us all of that.
She was the kind of aunt who lit up a room the moment she walked into it. She had an infectious laugh that made other people laugh before they even knew what was so funny. She was an instigator of the best kind of trouble, the kind that loosened people up, stirred joy, and left a story worth retelling later. Some people fill a room with volume. Judy filled it with life.
She also spent her entire professional life caring for others. She was a nurse who worked with geriatric patients, giving her days and years to people in vulnerable places. There’s something worth pausing over in that. She lived her life in a space where patience matters, where gentleness matters, where dignity must be guarded carefully, and where the smallest acts of care can mean everything. In Judy’s case, caregiving wasn’t just a profession. It was an extension of who she was.
That made this season feel even more layered.
As funeral professionals, we often talk about service in terms of what we provide. We talk about care, compassion, professionalism, guidance. Those words are right, and they matter. But when grief enters your own home, those words stop being professional language and become lived experience. You don’t think about care in the abstract. You feel its absence, and you feel its presence. You notice whether a moment is rushed or settled. You notice whether someone is merely competent or truly present.
Standing on the other side of the desk teaches something sharper than experience alone ever can.
It teaches you what paperwork feels like when your heart is tired.
It teaches you how even simple decisions can feel heavy when they’re wrapped in loss.
It teaches you that families often hear only part of what is being said, not because they don’t care, but because grief scatters concentration and narrows emotional bandwidth.
It teaches you that the little things matter even more than we think they do.
A pause matters.
A kind tone matters.
A chair pulled close matters.
A quiet explanation matters.
A moment that doesn’t feel rushed matters.
A funeral director who can bring order into chaos matters, certainly. But a funeral director who can bring peace into a room matters even more.
That truth became especially clear to me because of the unexpected grace that accompanied Judy’s final days.
I live in Iowa. Stephanie, Judy’s daughter, makes her home in New Jersey. That distance says something all by itself. Families can love one another deeply and still find themselves shaped by geography, schedules, seasons of life, and the simple fact that years move quickly. Judy’s stay in a hospice house just fifteen minutes from our home created an opportunity that ordinary life never would have made possible. It gave my wife and me the chance to open our guest room to Stephanie, and in doing so, it gave us the chance to truly get to know her.
Stephanie is twelve years younger than I am. By the time she was growing up, I was already immersed in my own world of sports, music, school, and all the things that fill the life of a young man moving quickly through his own stage of life. We were family, of course, but we never really lived in the same circle. We never occupied the same season at the same time. Then adulthood carried us even farther apart, with me in Iowa and Stephanie building her life in New Jersey. Our lives overlapped, but they didn’t run alongside one another in a meaningful way.
Hospice changed that.
Because Judy was so close to us, my wife and I were able to offer Stephanie a place to stay. What might have been only a season of sorrow also became a season of nearness. We shared meals. We talked. We remembered. We compared stories. We existed in the same daily rhythm for a little while, and that shared space did something important. I got to know Stephanie not simply as my cousin in name, or as Judy’s daughter, or as someone from another branch of the family tree. I got to know her as a person.
That is no small gift.
It reminded me that death, painful as it is, sometimes opens doors that busy years and long miles have kept closed. It gathers people back into the room. It slows us enough to notice one another again. It creates a kind of proximity where relationships can move beyond family titles and into something fuller, more personal, more rooted. In the shadow of Judy’s decline, there was grief. But there was also grace. There was the unexpected gift of reconnection.
That, too, is part of what families often experience and what we in funeral service can forget if we only focus on logistics.
Death hurts. It disrupts. It exposes fragility. But it also clarifies. It strips away some of the noise. It calls people back to one another. It reminds us who mattered, what was given, and what remains in us because someone was here. In the best and strangest way, grief can become a gathering place.
As professionals, we are often so focused on what must be done next that we can miss what else is happening in the room. We are trying to keep timelines intact, decisions moving, details accurate. All of that matters. It matters a great deal. Families need competence. They need clarity. They need leadership. But they also need room for the sacred, unplanned things grief sometimes brings with it. They need room for stories. Room for stillness. Room for old tensions to soften. Room for laughter to unexpectedly break through tears. Room for one more conversation. Room to rediscover one another.
Judy’s life leaves that kind of imprint. She cared for people whose bodies were failing and whose need for dignity had only grown more important. Then she lived that same spirit at home. She loved deeply. She laughed loudly. She stirred things up in a way that made life lighter, not heavier. She was kind in the truest sense of the word, not sentimental, not performative, but steady, generous, and human. The kind of kindness that makes people feel welcome. The kind of kindness that stays with you.
When grief is on the other foot, you begin to feel just how holy this space really is.
You’re reminded that this work has never only been about schedules, merchandise, documents, or logistics. Those things matter, and they always will. But they are not the heart of the work. The heart of the work is stewardship. It is guiding people through one of the most tender thresholds they will ever cross. It is helping them make sense of what must be done while never losing sight of what is being felt.
And when you become the one feeling it, the lesson lands differently.
You remember that families do not need perfection. They do not need polished language for its own sake. They do not need a performance of professionalism.
They need steadiness.
They need clarity.
They need kindness.
They need room.
They need someone who understands that grief does not move in straight lines and that love often speaks in fragments when loss is near.
Sitting on the family side of the desk this week reminded me that the best funeral professionals do more than manage a process. They create a place where people can breathe. They make it easier for families to take the next step, then the next one after that. They become, in the most practical and sacred sense, a calm presence in the storm.
Experience teaches us many things. Personal loss teaches us some things experience alone never can.
As we mourned Judy, I was reminded again that the families we serve are carrying far more than decisions. They are carrying memories, unfinished thoughts, gratitude, regret, fatigue, love, and the strange stillness that comes when life changes and nothing feels quite normal anymore. And sometimes, in the middle of all that, they are also carrying unexpected gifts: a deeper conversation, a renewed relationship, a better understanding of someone they’ve known for years but never truly had the chance to know.
That, too, is part of grief’s work.
To sit on that side of the desk is to remember, all over again, what our calling really asks of us.
Not just efficiency.
Not just expertise.
Presence.
Not just direction.
Understanding.
Not just service.
Care that can be felt.
That’s what grief on the other foot has been teaching me.
And it is a lesson worth keeping close.
Jay Jacobson is a licensed funeral director, speaker, consultant, and author whose career has been shaped by decades of service to grieving families, funeral professionals, and communities in need. Through his work in funeral service, leadership development, staffing, and education, he helps others lead with compassion, integrity, and presence. His writing is informed by both professional experience and personal seasons of caregiving and grief, giving his perspective a voice that is practical, humane, and deeply grounded. Jacobson is the author of Lead by Legendary Example and Never Stop Dreaming.
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