Craig Cooper: Share your thoughts before the funeral

Craig Cooper says to speak up while you can do it face-to-face. Photo / NZME

REVERSE SPIN:

I think there might be dead people I’ve never met that I’m closer to than a few people I know who are alive.

Often, we say heartfelt, honest things at funerals about people that we never said to them when they were alive.

It’s a shame, as they lie in their casket, that they can’t hear what is being said about them.

In some cases, if they had heard these words when they were alive, they might still be here.

As a manager and leader, I attended several funeral services of family members of staff, as a gesture of support and respect.

Often, I had not met the person who had passed away. Often, I had not known the staff member for a long time.

But as we do, we often reference our family in the workplace. ‘Mum this’ or ‘Dad that’. And kids - well, we love to talk about our kids.

In a workplace that has a decent culture, we learn about each other’s lives, our children, parents, family, our passions, our dislikes, what makes us laugh, what makes us angry.

In a workplace that has a decent culture, we learn about each other’s lives, our children, parents, family, our passions, our dislikes, what makes us laugh, what makes us angry. Photo / NZME

And so we feel our workmates’ sense of loss. Not as keenly as they do, of course. But because we care about them, we share a part of their grief.

We cover for them while they are away, we offer condolences, food; we may even cry with them.

And we go to funerals for people we have never met.

After one such experience, it struck me that a matriarch who had passed away had held a place of not just love, but deep affection within a whānau.

Knowing her children, and hearing the tributes to her at her funeral, I felt like I knew her.

Her long-term home had been a place where whānau gathered frequently to be together.

The thought of selling it struck an emotive chord with many of her children.

Personally, I never had a traditional family home where my folks lived for years.

I’m not sure whether I or my life would be different, if I had. It’s one of life’s ‘you’ll never know’ scenarios.

Like many New Zealanders, my parents separated and divorced. The closest thing I had to a family home was a house I spent my formative teen years in.

Perhaps that’s why, since I became an adult, I have lived in 10 houses.

My wife and I have owned eight of them.

No, we’re not property developers. A psychologist might find some deep-seated reason as to why we have moved so many times, but in defence of my restlessness, we have lived in Northland, Rotorua and Hawke’s Bay over a 17-year period, moving for work reasons.

It got me wondering. Had moving about so often had a negative affect on our kids?

It seems it’s one of those ‘you’ll never know’ answers, because neither seemed particularly troubled by their father’s wanderlust .

The counter side of not providing your children with a long-term stable home base is that - in the case of one of our kids - they become adaptable individuals, and have friends spread around the country.

Which, hopefully, is going to be a positive thing. The other child is quite happy being a homebody, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But the next time you’re at a funeral, ask yourself what you would say about someone close to you at their wake or tangi.

And then share those thoughts with them, before they die.