7 Things You Should NEVER Do at a Funeral (And What Every Mexican Mother Did Instead)

The first funeral I remember, I was seven, and the thing I remember is not the casket. It is my mother's hand. She had it on the widow's arm. Not holding it, just resting there, the whole time we stood in that line, and she did not say one word. Other people came up and said things, a great many things, and the widow nodded and her face got tighter with every one. Then it was our turn, and my mother put her hand on that woman's arm and looked at her, and the widow's face came apart, in a good way, the way a fist opens. I thought my mother did not know what to say. She knew exactly what to say. She knew the thing to say was nothing, and she knew it because her mother had known it, and the Book knew it first. Before anything: nothing here is aimed at the grieving. If you are the widow, the daughter, the mother who buried a child, this list is not for you and you cannot get anything wrong. This is for the rest of us, the ones who walk into that room to be with you and mostly do not know how. In this episode of The Mexican Mother's Bible, Bertha gives you seven things you should never do at a funeral, and for every one, what the women in our families did instead, because the instead is the whole point: • Never explain the death. "He is in a better place." "God needed another angel." Every one lands like a slap. Job's friends explained for thirty chapters, and at the end God was angry with the friends, not with Job (Job 42:7). INSTEAD: say the name, and then stop. • Never make it about you. "Mourn with those who mourn." (Romans 12:15) With. Not louder than. INSTEAD: find the kitchen. Somebody has to make coffee for sixty people. • Never ask how. The family has told that story forty times since Tuesday (Proverbs 11:13). INSTEAD: protect the family from the room. • Never take out the phone. A time to mourn (Ecclesiastes 3:4). INSTEAD: both hands free for whoever needs them. • Never come dressed for something else. The whole Book changes its clothes for grief (2 Samuel 3:31). INSTEAD: the black rebozo, from the bottom drawer, that told the room "I have come for this and for nothing else." • Never leave right after the service. "Carry each other's burdens." (Galatians 6:2) You cannot carry anything from the parking lot. INSTEAD: stay until the last chair is folded, and ask the one question: who is staying with you tonight? • Never disappear after the week. Real religion is "to look after widows in their distress" (James 1:27), the long distress that starts when everyone has gone home. INSTEAD: nine nights the house was not empty, and then "I will see you Thursday," for months. Every one of the seven is a way of talking, or a way of leaving. Every one of the insteads is a way of staying, and shutting up. And she holds back where the Book knew it first, in the most surprising place. Stay to the finish. "Jesus wept." (John 11:35) 💛 A gentle word: you have done some of these. So have I. I have said "at least" to a grieving woman and watched her face close, and driven home sick about it. Nobody teaches this. We learn it by getting it wrong in a room that cannot afford our mistakes. So if you are counting, stop. You are not being graded. You are being handed what our mothers had. I am not a pastor. I have no letters after my name and no pulpit to stand behind. I am a mother with a worn Bible, passing down what was passed down to me. Everything here, go and check for yourself. Do not take my word for it. Take His. If this changes how you walk into the next one, please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE so it reaches another family before they need it. God bless you, mija. 📖 Tell me in the comments, the warm half, not the sad half: what did the women in YOUR family do? The pot your mother always brought, the thing she always made, what she wore, how long she kept going back. And if one person at a funeral in your life did it right, said the name and then nothing, tell me about her. Tell me your county too. I read every one.