"How much did you lose along the way?"

Today while doing the dishes and having breakfast I caught the CBC show Global Perspectives, and one of the most moving stories I've ever heard called The Lonely Funeral. It's the kind of thing that if you read a short paragraph about it in the paper, you'd think--that's interesting. But when you hear a longer program, with interviews of the participants, a well-produced documentary, it becomes incredibly beautiful and moving.

I wished I was reading it as a novel, or watching it as a fictionalized movie (think: About Schmidt or American Splendor or The Squid and the Whale) so I could experience the story unfolding. I would have cried even more than I just did!

If you like listening to things online, you can hear the 30 min program here.

In Amsterdam the city holds funerals for people who die and have no one to put on a funeral. It might be an abandoned baby they find in the street, a lonely millionaire, a murderer, etc. When a new civil servant, Ger Fritz, took on the job of arranging them, he didn't like how they were being done--he wanted them to be less distinguishable from other funerals. So he arranged for flowers to be bought, and three songs played, and attended them. He's not a sentimental man, he just thought this is proper, and he attended to make sure everything was done right.


A local poet heard about it, and started running after Fritz, trying to convince him that they should have a poet write a poem for each of these people. Fritz resisted the idea, mostly because he didn't want to divulge information about these people--out of respect for their privacy, and fear that the poet would judge these people based on random facts (Eg. that not one of the man's 10 children wanted to attend the funeral, or that the person died of alcohol poisoning).

But the poet, Starik, won out, and here's his reason for wanting to write the poems: "One of man’s essential qualities is the need for a story. We are story machines. Our job is to return to people their stories that have somehow been lost along the way."

Here's one of the poems he wrote, recited on the show:

Goodbye stranger, I say goodbye, on the road
to nowhere, to the final country where everyone is welcomed in,
where nothing needn't know your origin. Farewell sir,
without papers, without identity. What were you looking for?
How much did you lose along the way?

Who stares through the empty window, waits - nameless man, wait, while I speak
and entrust my empty words to this empty room.
I am too late. You I never knew.

Not at your weakest, not in your strength.
Not in the final country, where you are greeted without name.
I don't know the words you spoke. Not me.

Who then, loved you? In which rooms did you sleep, who kissed you goodnight, who'll wear out your shirt?
Who will want to stand where you once stood?
Who now takes the road you took?

Who still looks for you? Who remembers whence you came?
Who heard the voice calling out for you to come on home man to your final haven, Amsterdam.