Musings: A wake by mistake, but the sorrow was genuine
Mourners at a funeral. A reader writes that he honored the deceased and the path he had followed, even if the wake he attended was for a different person than expected. Credit: AP / Andrea Comas
I recently went to a wake — by mistake. The person who had passed was not the person I thought he was. It turns out our paths may have crossed casually over time, and I may have known him from a different place a number of years ago. Yet I didn't "know" him.
Notice of the wake and the deceased's name were announced in an email from a meditation group of which I am a member. The person's first name was the same as someone I knew from the group, whose last name I didn't know. I mistakenly assumed he was that person and attended. Once there, I found it was another member with whom I likely had had some passing acquaintance, casually, over the years.
I watched the mourners who did know him, then chatted with some, and I could see the regard in which he was held. The multiple eulogies and remembrances more than confirmed his kindness, decency, uniqueness and loving connections with the people in his life and with humanity overall.
I expressed my condolences to his widow, not because I "knew" him but to honor what I had come to see he stood for and the path he had followed. I did that in much the way many people sing "Happy Birthday" in a restaurant when servers bring a cake with candles to someone we don't know at a nearby table. While that person is a stranger to us, we can experience a very human connectedness and share in that little ritual, not unlike the witnessing of someone's farewell, whether or not we "knew" the person.
Indeed, no man is an island. I went to a wake by mistake? Not really.
Don Pfeifer, West Hempstead
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