Fictional Deaths and Real Funerals
The words stopped me in my tracks.
I’d been hired to write a grant proposal. It seemed like a good match, too: a not-for-profit agency that does work with homicide victims’ families in an inner-city locale, and a partnership grant between the federal Office of Victims of Crime and a local crime victims’ resource center to provide direct services to homicide survivors and victims’ families.
I was in full work mode. I’d printed out all the relevant documents. I had the wording down. I’d pored over appropriate websites. It was time to speak with the director of the agency, and in preparation for the interview, I read everything that I could about their work. And that was when the words stopped me.
Burial assistance.
There’s no getting around those words, is there? I’d been immersed in statistics about homicides; I’d read about young men and young women shot, stabbed, intentionally hit by automobiles; I’d read about families torn apart, children left without parents, women wailing in the night; and through it all I’d been able to keep a comfortable distance between the words and my heart. It was my mind that was engaged, aided by the knowledge that I was part of an effort to actually do something about it …
Until I read those words.
