LIVING IN THE WAKING LIGHT WITH THOSE WHO AREN’T THERE
One of our favourite clients partnered with us https://towncriermarketing.ca a couple years ago with the unique challenge of tastefully marketing their funeral home. Rutherford Cremation & Funeral Services https://www.jarfh.com/ isn't like businesses where you can have promotions, sales, or impulse offers to boost revenue. It is not that type of service, and there is a higher level of tact and sensitivity that has to be applied.
Like some of our other professional services clients, we stressed the importance of being and educator, confidant, and leverage the dedication to community service by the funeral director Stuart. The weekly blogs that he has put together as content for social media and the webpage blog has been a local hit. Articles meant to demystify the procedures at a funeral home, responsibilities of the family, and even the sensitive topic of inevitable death are a fantastic message we figured would be a nice match for #thoughtfuldailypost.
Here is the latest in the weekly installment for your consideration...
DAY:
Waking light. The room takes shape. I know where I am. I know who I love. And like a lozenge that slowly dissolves in the throat, I know more specifically who’s left here to love and those that aren’t. A taste in the mouth of mortality. Those departed - I must love them differently. They’re gone. But the feelings stick around; sticky because they’re mixed with hope and regret. Always some regret. Not because I didn’t say it. Not because it wasn’t shown; but because of the depth of the chasm of the heart. So much more there that wasn’t given, wasn’t used up; and the discrepancy between the amount of love used and the amount remaining is daunting. That is how the dead live within. But how much love can one human being give in a lifetime? And to how many? Until empty? Never enough. Never emptied. They remain because we remain... unemptied.
ANOTHER DAY:
Realization. All you need is love, but only if everyone is loving. Otherwise, the cavity where the heart resides fills up with other stuff in the mix, with something else, with some excess of something left unexpressed. Yearning. Sometimes the cracks in the heart itself are sewn up with different thread. Not love. Certainly not that. I patch myself with isolation. Some have closed it all up with want, with expectation, with anger, blame. The son who crashed, the daughter too weak to stand alone; the one who jumped, the one who wasted away... all the stories patched up with some unmatched thread. Not love. No, not that. I wonder sometimes, is there even enough there to begin the stitching.
YET ANOTHER DAY:
Waking light. After the departure. After their long and slow and all too fast and sudden dying. I’m lying still. I’m breathing. There are whole days ahead for me beyond the one day where their day ended. A lifetime. I know this fact because it’s happened before. I can list the names of those who rebooted the life left to me through their leaving. So, I rise the body, raise the heart, make the coffee, paint the smile. Still know where I am. Still know who I love, but the numbers are dwindling, and the head and the heart are displaced - thinking everything at once and nothing at all, feeling nothing at all and everything at once. A knot of emotion and thought. Too much thread in the ball and nothing to sew. How does one stitch up emptiness when it moves in time; forward, then backward.
A LIFETIME OF DAYS:
Years pass again. Days and nights link. Seasons spent. There are starts and there are finishes. I am linear, but those I’ve loved, still, are not. The coming and the going of them; like a window without a latch, opening and closing at the whim of the wind. They materialize, gentle as the air drifting in. A wave of welcomed disturbance. And the cavity of the heart feels the familiar filling. Feels it fresh. It’s love again, isn’t it? Perhaps. With little or no impurities now? Perhaps. Still, I wear them all, I try them on; the ones I’ve loved; all of them as a lingering thought. For an hour, for a day, however long that I can... like clothing I found in the closet that still fits. I let myself fill up again and spend it all out in breathing thoughts of them. And I think; stay. Just this once, the entire day, the remaining lifetime until all this love is poured out. But they never can, and they never do. And somehow, I sense I never will pour it out. Why? Will I lose myself without it? They move away in a distortion of time before I’m even close to hollowed. Left with love. Never emptied.
END OF DAYS:
Waking light. Familiar and new. I know where I am. Shapeless room. I know those I’ve loved. I forgot all the names. I sense them instead. At the end of days.
Only love. Fill your eyes with waking light.
UNTIL SOON. LIVE WELL.
A number of months of consistent content, community engagement and giving away the knowledge for free as a public service and we have done well. First on local google searches, first on maps results, and the incumbent competition has gone to the lengths of advertising on the radio and recreating their website at the investment of thousands to fend off the competition.
We thoroughly enjoy reading the weekly posts and are happy to post them on the blockchain. Not only can we share the wisdom globally, but the value that come from the content, key words and backlinks from numerous #hive front ends will give them another boost to their SEO.
We would encourage you to shop local and drop links to your favourite locally owned businesses in your posts as a REAL way you can help them build their online presence and oil the engine that will deliver them new prospects.
Never underestimate the power of backlinks for a small business!
Thank you for your business and community support, following our story and sharing in those we tell of our clients. Feel free to create a blog for your business https://signup.hive.io/ and ask @town.crier how to leverage it towards success.
