Tev Zukor PhD
There is an irony in the best advice I’ve ever received: “Never get old. It hurts too much.” While this comment is usually delivered with a wink and a nudge; as the years pass, the humor behind that sentiment begins to give way to cold, hard truth. We often assume the “hurt” of aging refers to the physical—the creak of joints, the slowing of the pace, or the sudden fragility of a body that once felt invincible. But the true sting of longevity is the inevitable thinning of our inner circle of friends. To live a long life is to witness the departure of the architects who helped build it. It is the silent, growing space at the dinner table, the phone number in your contacts that you no longer dial, or the Facebook status update that will never change.
Recently, I lost a man who was a friend in a non-traditional sense; he was the father of one of my closest childhood friends, and although he never knows it, he was also a surrogate father figure to me. His passing didn’t just leave a hole in my present; it triggered a sensory flood of memories from my past that I hadn’t revisited in years. He was the one who taught me what it truly meant to be an adult, though his lessons were far from the traditional script of career and social etiquette. He didn’t preach conformity or the safety of the status quo. Instead, he modeled a life where you make decisions that align with your own core values, even—and especially—when those values clash with the expectations of society. He was the first “adult” gamer that I ever knew. I will always remember that after he was evicted from his home; he moved into a new apartment he could barely afford. For over a year, he had a mattress on the floor; but otherwise, a spartan existence with no furniture, no pictures on the walls, and no television – but the best gaming computer setup I had ever seen and a dial-up modem to access the burgeoning internet.
When I think of him, I don’t see a man defined by his successes, but by his incredible resilience in the face of obstacles that would have broken many of his contemporary peers. He weathered the unthinkable loss of a child, the painful fracturing of a marriage, and the exhausting, daily chaos of raising a teenage son—one of my closest friends—as a single parent with very little income. Despite these layers of grief, the reflection staring back at me in my mind isn’t one of bitterness or a man hardened by the world. It is one of profound compassion and relentless kindness. His life was a masterclass in persistence; he was living proof that one can endure the worst the world has to offer and still make the conscious choice to remain soft and decent.
In the immediate wake of his death, I felt a visceral, almost magnetic pull to be around the people who knew him. It served as a stark, grounding reminder that funerals are ultimately for the living, not the dead. We sometimes think of mourning as a private, inward-facing task, and while solitary mourning certainly has its place, allowing us the solace to process, synthesize, and come to terms with our personal loss, there is an unmatched, transformative power in the group. When people gather over the loss of an important person, we magnify the legacy of the deceased in a way that cannot be done individually. One person’s memory is a flicker from the head of a match; easily extinguished by the wind, but a room full of people remembering together becomes a bonfire that provides both light and warmth in a world that suddenly seems colder.
There is a unique, almost wordless therapeutic benefit to simply sharing space with others who carry the same weight. In our culture, we often feel an immense pressure to have the “right” words, the most profound story, or the perfect eulogy; but the true value of connection often lies in the simple, quiet act of being present. Many people find that they don’t want to exclusively mourn in isolation. There is a significant, measurable benefit from sharing a room, even if you aren’t directly sharing stories or speaking at all. Just knowing that the person sitting three feet away understands the specific shape of the void left behind is enough to keep the grief from becoming overwhelming.
Perhaps the most surprising, and beautiful, element of collective mourning is how it inadvertently looks toward the future. Funerals and memorials often act as a catalyst for new connections and unexpected systems of support. In the process of honoring someone who is gone, we often find ourselves reaching out to those who remain—rekindling old friendships that may have drifted or finding deep, sudden solace in a stranger who loved the same man for entirely different reasons. We don’t just go to these gatherings to say a final goodbye; we go to remind ourselves that while the individual may be gone, the “group” remains. We gather to ensure that as we grow older and the “hurts” of life continue, we don’t have to carry the heavy burden of memory alone.