By Carrie Friedman,Santiago Calatrava

Copyright huffingtonpost

“If people aren’t laughing during my memorial, you’ve done it wrong,” my father told us for years, long before his death. “Funerals are inherently sad; for mine, cut the treacle a bit with humour.”

He thought a lot about funerals. Growing up, death was a dinner table conversation at our house almost every night, because my dad was an estate planning attorney. He always protected his clients’ privacy, but would bring the lessons home: Never fight with your siblings over money. Never stop talking to your brother and sister – work it out with words, go to a family therapist if you have to. Your mother and I would be so disappointed if you didn’t get along after we were gone.

My dad spent his days divvying up assets among sometimes testy or distant family members. He helped his clients write their wills and he attended enough funerals to develop strong beliefs about them. He often advised his clients to take a beat after a family member’s death and delay having the service in order to gather their thoughts and think about what their loved one would want.

He believed every close family member should write a eulogy. Whether they actually delivered the speech at the funeral mattered less than the process of organising one’s feelings and acknowledging their relationship with the loved one who had died. It’s a therapeutic rite of passage and aids in the grieving process. He believed it put the relationship into perspective.

Dad kept a folder at home in his den with handwritten notes about his wishes for his own memorial. In the folder, he included favourite hymns, songs, poems and notes.

He died in early February 2022, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease and dementia which slowly rendered him unable to communicate using speech or writing.

After his death, my mother turned to the folder and had a final conversation with her husband of more than 50 years. We then did the things my dad had outlined for us to do.

We planned his requested “celebration of life” to take place a few months after his passing, which gave us time for our grief to shift from raw disbelief to more reflective and open-hearted.

We waited until May, close to his birthday, and held it in the Milwaukee Art Museum, a place he loved. My father was affiliated with the museum – either as legal counsel or on their board – for 35 years.

The building, designed by Santiago Calatrava, is a work of art in its own right, and in the main hall, surrounded by white walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Lake Michigan and the beauty of spring in the Midwest, we honoured my father.

We put the “fun” in funeral

Because my father wasn’t very religious, we printed laminated prayer cards featuring a favourite poem of his called “I’m Free,” which he had encountered at a friend’s service years before. But to cut the “treacle,” my sister suggested we employ a few foot-notes. For instance, after the first line, “Don’t grieve for me,” the footnote, written in my father’s voice, read: “Grieve some. I think I earned it.”

So often, our culture looks at funerals as maudlin events. They don’t have to be. Our dad was hilarious, so it not only made sense to add humour to his service, it also honoured his wishes.

We each wrote a eulogy

Everyone in the immediate family gave speeches. My dad would have been flattered to know that dozens of people from his life also wanted to speak – to share their own “Rick Friedman” stories – but there wasn’t enough time.

We included my husband, my sister’s husband, and my cousin’s husband, who my dad had taken under his wing when he was a young lawyer. He spoke of our dad’s unbounded and unapologetic empathy.

My mum warmly welcomed everyone and spoke about him as a devoted husband and father. My sister talked about my dad’s kind-hearted, victimless humour, how he never punched down – or up, for that matter. I detailed our shared loves of writing and architecture, and reminisced about the open houses we visited together on Sundays.

My mum followed my dad’s wishes to the letter – including booking a pianist and singer to perform his chosen songs (“Here I am, Lord,” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone”) – and also had her own great ideas. Between each speaker, she played funny videos my dad made over the decades: send-ups of old TV shows, infomercials for fictional low-budget legal services he invented (“Wills on Wheels” and “Wills While You Wait,”) and creations like “the long-lost ad campaign for A1 Steak Sauce” with the made-up slogan, “you can put it on ANYTHING!” that featured my then-college-aged brother as the spokesperson, having to take big bites of A1 on everything from cereal to ice cream. There were many takes and swear-filled outtakes.

My mum chose to open the service with a video of my dad welcoming everyone to my 2004 wedding reception, his trademark wit and warmth on full display. My mother’s goal with the videos was to remind us and our guests of who our dad was before illness robbed him of his voice.

Watching her husband die of Parkinson’s disease and dementia was brutal – a slow-motion death that stole each of his faculties, one by one. By having some time to regroup, our mum got to lovingly reconstruct her beloved husband: every video, every speech given, every word she shared gave our dad his voice back, and restored Rick, brick by brick. It was like he was there with us again – but in his best health.

I don’t know how any of us could have planned my dad’s funeral if he hadn’t left such specific instructions. My siblings and I witnessed our mum’s grief – and our own – shift in real time, and that, we realised, was why our dad wanted us to do this together. Our relationships are even stronger now because we planned this celebration.

On the day of the service, the gifts our dad gave us were on full display – my sister’s ingenuity, my observations, my brother’s humour. My brother closed the ceremony perfectly.

“If there’s one thing my dad taught me, it was never to waste an opportunity to give back to the community,” he said. “And I certainly don’t want to let him down here today.” He then announced that everyone’s names from the guestbook had been entered into a raffle. The prize? An all-you-can-eat buffet dinner at a local dive restaurant, with “unlimited biscuits and food-borne illnesses.”

“Congratulations!” he said, and then named two different guests. “Reservations weren’t required but we made one for you anyway. They’re at 4pm, so you better get moving! Off you go. The rest of you: please enjoy the passed hors d’oeuvres and thank you for coming.”

It was exactly the sort of joke my father would have made up himself. Roaring laughter echoed through the halls of the museum, just as my dad would have wanted.

Even three years later, my family members and I still receive comments from people who attended dad’s service.

“That was the best funeral I’ve ever been to,” a friend of mine, who had flown to Milwaukee for the event, told me recently. “It feels weird to say that about a funeral,” she added.

An old coworker of my dad’s sent me a message on Facebook recently, relaying something she had just recalled: “For Funny Hat Day at the office once, he wore a colander on his head.” (That tracks.)

These stories, in addition to the one I’m sharing here, keep his memory alive. My dad spent most of his work life crafting other people’s legacies. Now, I find myself carrying on so many of his traditions. Thanks to him, I too have strong beliefs about funerals, and I also have a file on my computer with a few thoughts and wishes for my own celebration of life. The legacy continues.

Carrie Friedman has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among others. She is honored to have her fourth piece in Huff Post. She lives in Southern California with her husband and daughters. Her website is www.carriefriedman.com.

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