Lebby Funeral Home Quotes

waiting for the bus
waiting for a bus
under shadeless tree,
blacks, hispanics, asians ~
the tired, the poor,
the great unwashed,
the huddled masses
yearning to breathe free ~
anchored with bags
waiting for their ride home
or to a wedding,
funeral, baptism,
maybe a second job

they glance
nervously, repeatedly
at wristwatches,
cell phones,
the time-table,
the axis of the sun,
the bus is late
as usual

finally it stops,
braking with an owl's screech,
opening its door
with a cobra's hiss

they reach for their wallets, purses
for coins and tokens to hand sharon martinez,
the ferrywoman of 14th Street,
to cross the broad way sticks

i'm not too proud
to draw my poetry
from the crowd ~
from the wretched refuse,
the tempest-tossed homeless
the common people
huddling under bus shelters ~
for the sacred, my friend, does not dwell
in churches, temples, mosques or synagogues ~
it dwells most profoundly
in the stink and sweat
of poverty ~ Beryl Dov

Who knows when the end is reached? Death may be the beginning of life. How do I know that love of life is not a delusion after all? How do I know that he who dreads to die is as a child who has lost the way and cannot find his way home? How do I know that the dead repent of having previously clung to life? ~ Zhuangzi

Ah, much deluded! lay aside
Thy threats, and anger misapplied!
Art not afraid with sounds like these
To offend, where thou canst not appease?
Death is not (wherefore dream'st thou thus?)
The son of night and Erebus:
Not was of fell Erynnis born
On gulfs where Chaos rules forlorn.
But sent from God, his presence leaves,
To gather home his ripen'd sheaves,
To call encumber'd souls away
From fleshly bonds to boundless day,
(As when the winged hours excited,
And summon forth the morning light)
And each to convoy to her place
Before the Eternal Father's face. ~ John Milton

I want to hate him for what he did. Leaving us. It's not right. He's gone and I'm stuck here in this fucking funeral home, staring at his casket. There's no way out. Not for me, and certainly not for him. The casket is closed. Bolted shut for eternity. No one forced him to be a Jackass wannabe, though. ~ Jolene Perry

If we had flown Victoria to New Zealand, she would have been at a funeral home, with private viewings in an atmosphere of stilted, muffled unquiet. I would have had little opportunity to sit with the body and pour out my lament.
The Singaporeans would not have been there with their reassuring ease in the ritual of mourning. My family might have come bristling with disrespect, and rent the air with accusations and blame. Some mourners would have been embarrassed by my tears. They and others would have wanted the whole thing done and dusted quickly. The funeral director or an assistant might well have been the ones dressing the body. I would have not realised the normality of death so
quickly, and more importantly at this point, the absolute necessity to go briefly mad with grief, to cover yourself - metaphorically - in the dowdy burlap of mourning. ~ Linda Collins

Instructions for Dad.

I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you.
I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me.
Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people.
I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums.
I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements.
I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave.
I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy).
I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to ge ~ Jenny Downham

She turned down her street once more, glaring at the garish lights someone had put up along their house. Might as well light the roof with "Santa Park Here". Sheesh. The closer she got to home, though, the lower her heart sank. The overly bright house looked suspiciously like ... No. Oh, no. He wouldn't. He had. Light up animated animals were dotted all over her lawn. The circle of life has apparently found our power outlet. And why the fuck is there a Star of David on my roof? She wasn't exactly the most church-going member of the community, but you'd think Simon would know what religion she was. After all, she knew exactly who was going to officiate at his funeral. She picked up her cell phone and called Emma. "I'm going to kill him. ~ Dana Marie Bell

Then isn't this rather all a false funeral? Can't it help you to see that there is something wrong when all the dreams in this house-good or bad-had to depend on something that might never have happened if a man had not died? We always say at home: Accident was at the first and will be at the last a poor tree from which the fruits of life may bloom. ~ Lorraine Hansberry

Virginia returned home, followed by the cats. There, in the kitchen, she gave birth to seven little boars. Out of sentiment she kept the one most like Igname, and boiled the others for herself and the cats, as a funeral feast. ~ Leonora Carrington

Little things.
I drive by the funeral home where he was taken several times a week, if not a day. Ordinarily, these trips mean nothing. But one time not long ago I happened to glance at the building and my mind was filled with visions of him laid out on the table, his body being prepared.
I started crying. I was still crying when I got on the freeway a short time later.
"You're gone," I whispered. "I can't believe you're gone."
I can't believe it. I can't believe he's gone.
I repeated the words over and over, until I started to hear something else above the rumble of the tires and the rush of the wind.
I'm still here. Always with you. ~ Taya Kyle

Can you help me move those tables against the wall?" Mama pointed to five tables in the back corner. "The funeral home said they needed four feet of clearance all the way around. ~ Katie Graykowski

You would have thought that I had left 11 corpses on the steps of a funeral home. ~ Alex Ferguson

Oh my God. I just got dumped by a red headed mortician in a funeral home named Crummy's, after pretending to be a circus freak at a visitation I had just crashed. I was pretty sure there'd be no bouncing back from this. -Dakota Bombay ~ Leslie Langtry

My world had stopped, but the outside one kept going. On Saturday, one week after the murder, Bubba had a basketball game. He wanted to go. I wanted him to go, too.
And if he went, I was going, too. Even though I hadn't been out of the house except to go to the funeral home.
A friend picked Bubba up early so he could get there for the pregame warm-up. When it came time to leave to watch the game, I decided to run rather than drive. It was five minutes by car, and I thought it wouldn't take long to trot over.
I was wrong about that.
Four or five of the men at the house accompanied me, including my brother-in-law Jeff, who had just gone through an operation and was still recovering. I'm sure his rehab plan didn't include running alongside a half-crazy woman, but he did anyway, without a complaint or even a "Hey, slow down."
We got to the church gym just in time for the game. I felt such pure joy watching Bubba play. It was one of the very few times that whole month that I was able to completely forget my grief and feel fully myself. They were fleeting moments, but they loom large now in my memory, little islands of relief in a sea of dread.
We all walked home. The men tossed a ball back and forth with Bubba. They couldn't replace Chris, but they provided an enormous, unstated reassurance to Bubba that he would never be alone. ~ Taya Kyle

I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I get lonely? I promise not to scare you. ~ Jenny Downham

I was saved in a shabby little motel room. Of course, you don't have to be in a church to be saved. After all, you're probably not going to die in a funeral home. It's convent if you do, but it probably won't happen. ~ Robert Morris

They were both smiling so hard, it was surprising the frame could contain the happiness of that moment, surprising that it didn't shatter into a million pieces, floating all over the funeral home like dust. ~ Liz Welch

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. ~ Albert Camus

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence. ~ Caitlin Doughty

Jephus Hardy?"
Stunned. My jaw dropped when I saw Cephus Hardy walk up to me in the magazine aisle of Artie's Meat and Deli. I was admiring the cover of Cock and Feathers, where my last client at Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, Chicken Teater, graced the cover with his prize Orloff Hen, Lady Cluckington. ~ Tonya Kappes

He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average British ghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and he is happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn the whole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting a bankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terrible disaster, about which nobody in their senses would want to know sooner than they could possible help, and the prior knowledge of which can serve no useful purpose whatsoever, and he feels that he is combining duty with pleasure. He would never forgive himself if anybody in his family had a trouble and he had not been there for a couple of months beforehand, doing silly tricks on the lawn or balancing himself on somebody's bedrail.

("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER) ~ Jerome K. Jerome

I'm gonna kill him," Eve said, or at least that was what it sounded like filtered through the pillow.
Stake him right in the heart, shove garlic up his ass, and-and-"
And what?" (Michael)
When did you get home?" Claire demanded.
Apparently just in time to hear my funeral plans. I especially like the garlic up the ass. It's ... different. ~ Rachel Caine

His mother wanted him closer to home. The funeral had been ~ Carl Hiaasen

Four days after his own funeral, Albert Wilkes came home for Tea. ~ Justin Richards

She's coming here? I knew she was on her way to New Orleans, but I thought we'd have the service at a funeral home. Betts slung the dishrag over her shoulder. This was why her mother hadn't wanted help planning the service - Gigi's final farewell was to be the ultimate fuck-you. It was wrong. It was a sacrilege. ~ Katie Graykowski

There had never been a funeral in our town before, at least not during our lifetimes. The majority of dying had happened during the Second World War when we didn't exist and our fathers were impossibly skinny young men in black-and-white photographs - dads on jungle airstrips, dads with pimples and tattoos, dads with pinups, dads who wrote love letters to the girls who would become our mothers, dads inspired by K rations, loneliness and glandular riot in malarial air into poetic reveries that ceased entirely once they got back home. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The biggest problem is the funerals that don't exist. People call the funeral home, they pick up the body, they mail the ashes to you, no grief, no happiness, no remembrance, no nothing. That happens more often than it doesn't in the United States. ~ Caitlin Doughty

It was there, in the parlors of the funeral home---my daily stations with the local lately dead---that the darkness would often give way to light. A fellow citizen outstretched in his casket, surrounded by floral tributes, waiting for the homages and obsequies, would speak to me in the silent code of the dead: "So, you think you're having a bad day?" The gloom would lift inexplicably. Here was one to whom the worst had happened, often in a variety of ways, and yet no word of complaint was heard from out the corpse. Nor did the world end, nor the sky fall, nor his or her people become blighted entirely. Life, it turns out, goes on with or without us. There is at least as much to be thankful for as wary of. ~ Thomas Lynch

Chris and I talked about the ceremony on the way home.
"There were a lot of people there," I said. "I would like a small ceremony."
"For a funeral?"
"Well, yeah."
"I want a big funeral," he said. "I'm gone, right? Blow it out."
He wanted bagpipes, music, and a large crowd.
We talked a bit more. "Do you still want to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery?" I asked. We'd discussed the possibility several times; it had been among his dearest wishes.
"I don't know if I feel that way anymore," he confessed.
"Why is that?"
"I just want to be wherever is best for y'all."
I was so taken aback by that. But it stayed with me. ~ Taya Kyle

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term. ~ Seamus Heaney

President Grant sent a note to Golden. The note read that there was a member of the stake presidency from Coalville, who had passed away. His wife had requested Golden speak at the funeral.

Golden didn't get the note until he returned from a Church assignment in Southern California. By then the funeral was in an hour, and Coalville was almost two hours away He hopped in his Model T and drove as fast as he could. When he arrived, the funeral was almost over. The bishop saw Golden walk in. "Brother Kimball, come forward. We'd like to hear from you."

He went up and said, "I'm very happy to be here. I'm sorry I'm late. I want to tell you what a wonderful person this man was. I knew him, I've stayed in his home. He was an inspiration to me. He was a good father, he was a good husband. He goes to a great reward."

As he started to hit his stride, he looked out in the audience. About the eighth row back, there sat the man he thought was dead!

So he looked down in the casket. He did not recognize the man lying there. Confused, he turned and said, "Say Bishop, who the hell's dead around here anyway? ~ James Kimball

Every morning I walk by a funeral home, and that's my productivity hack for how to make sure your to-do list is properly prioritized. ~ Anil Dash