When Morning Comes...
The Quiet Grief that Lives Between Forgetting and Remembering
I told you about the nights, but nobody really warns you about the mornings. And the more I think about it, the more I suspect the morning might actually be the harder of the two.
At night, at least, you know what is coming. You learn that the dark has teeth, that the quiet begins to grow loud somewhere around two in the morning, and that the other side of the bed will be cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature. Night is difficult, but in a strange way it is also predictable. After a while you begin to recognize its rhythms, and you can brace yourself for it.
Morning is different. Morning sneaks up on you. It arrives in that fragile space between sleep and waking, that thin moment when your mind has not quite caught up with your life yet. For just a moment, maybe half a moment, you forget. And then you remember.
That remembering, every single morning, carries its own kind of loss. It is a small grief inside the larger one, like being told the news again, quietly and without ceremony, just long enough to knock the wind out of you before the day has even properly begun. Nobody warns you about that moment, the brief forgetting followed by the sudden remembering. It might last only ten seconds, but it can feel like the loneliest ten seconds of the whole day.
Eventually you get up anyway, because what else is there to do. And once you do, you begin to notice that morning has its own geography of grief.
The coffee pot is usually the first place it appears. If you spent years sharing life with someone, the coffee pot seems to know the story before you do. It is still set for two. You may find yourself reaching automatically for two mugs before your hand stops in midair. Or you make a full pot because that is what you have always done, and now half of it goes cold on the counter.
The bathroom carries its own quiet ambush. His razor still rests on the shelf. Her robe still hangs on the hook. You have not moved them yet, partly because moving them feels like a decision you are not ready to make, and partly because leaving them there allows you to pretend, just for another day, that nothing has changed. The problem, of course, is that leaving them there means you see them every single morning.
There is no good option, only the one you can manage today.
The chair at the kitchen table that nobody sits in anymore. The second toothbrush. The voicemail you have not deleted because it still carries her voice, and you are not ready for that silence yet.
Morning is full of objects that used to mean nothing and now mean everything. Over time they begin to feel like something else entirely. Monuments, maybe. Small ones. Quiet ones. Devastating ones.
Here is something else about morning that takes a while to notice. The world does not pause for it.
At first that can feel almost cruel. The birds outside the window continue singing as if nothing has changed. The neighbor pulls out of the driveway at the same time he always does. The mail still arrives in the afternoon. Someone down the street is mowing the lawn, and for a moment you want to step outside and ask how it is possible that ordinary life is still happening.
Life just keeps moving. The audacity of it can feel almost offensive.
And yet, after standing at enough gravesides and sitting with enough families during the early days of their loss, I have begun to notice something about mornings. Morning is often where the story quietly begins to turn. Not because the grief has disappeared. It has not. Not because the pain suddenly lifts with the rising sun. It does not, at least not for a long time.
But morning carries a kind of stubbornness that night does not have. A quiet persistence that shows up whether you invited it or not.
There is a story in the Gospel of John that has always stayed with me. Mary goes to the tomb at dawn. Not midday when the sun is high, and not later in the afternoon when the world might feel a little less fragile. She goes at dawn, in that earliest and most uncertain light, when it would have been easier and perhaps more sensible to stay home. But she goes anyway, carrying her grief like something she cannot set down.
And it is there, in that dim morning light, that she discovers the story is not finished. That moment did not erase any of it — the tomb was real, the death was real, the grief was real — but morning held something she could not have imagined while the night was still heavy around her.
I am not going to paper over anyone’s grief with a resurrection metaphor. Your loss is real. The empty chair is real. The cold coffee is real. But I do believe that morning carries something within it. It carries a stubbornness and with that, a quiet insistence that the story is still being written.
Maybe that is what grace looks like in the early days of loss. Not comfort exactly and not answers. Certainly not the feeling that everything is suddenly okay, because everything is not okay and pretending otherwise helps no one.
Sometimes grace simply looks like morning. Morning arriving again, uninvited and persistent, refusing to not show up. The coffee pot still working. The birds outside the window completely unaware of your pain. The light coming through the same window it always has, landing on the floor in the same place as yesterday, as if it has not yet heard the news.
At first that can feel like cruelty.
But maybe it is not.
Maybe it is the world quietly insisting that there is still a day here. And that day, however fragile it feels, still belongs to you.
You do not have to be okay in the morning. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time. You are allowed to sit with the second mug still resting on the counter. You are allowed to let the coffee grow cold. You are allowed to stay in the chair by the window longer than is practical, watching the neighbor mow his lawn and feeling the strange distance between his world and yours.
You are allowed to let morning be hard.
But here is something I have learned from watching people carry this weight. Morning keeps coming back. Every single day it arrives without asking permission and without checking whether you feel ready for it.
It simply appears again, faithful in a way that almost feels stubborn.
And somewhere inside that stubborn return there is a kind of grace. Not the grace that fixes things, but the grace that stays. The grace that quietly says, I know you did not sleep well. I know you forgot for a moment and then remembered. I know the coffee pot broke your heart again this morning.
Here is a little more light anyway.
The Unlikely Altar this time might simply be the window, the same window the light comes through every morning, landing in the same place on the floor.
It does not know your grief. It cannot fix your grief.
But it shows up anyway.
And maybe, just for today, that small and stubborn light is enough to help you begin again.
Every now and then I sit through a really good Final Expense training. The presenter is knowledgeable, the information is solid, and the systems being explained clearly work for the people who are using them successfully. Someone is talking about lead flow, objection handling, follow-up strategy, and how to guide a conversation toward a decision, and I find myself nodding along because I understand the importance of all of it. And then, somewhere about halfway through, usually when everyone else seems energized and ready to conquer the world, a quiet thought slips into my mind: What exactly am I doing here? It is not disagreement. I am not rolling my eyes or dismissing the training. In fact, most of the time I respect the people teaching it and appreciate what they are sharing. It's like suddenly realizing you are wearing someone else’s jacket. It fits well enough, but you are aware every few minutes that it was not originally tailored for you. For most of my adult life, people invited me into their lives as a pastor. I spent decades sitting in hospital rooms where time felt suspended, standing beside families at gravesides trying to find words when there really were none, and sharing conversations around kitchen tables where life’s hardest questions were asked without rehearsal. People asked me to listen, to pray, to help them make meaning, and sometimes simply to sit quietly so they would not feel alone. So when I hear training language about moving a client toward commitment or learning how to handle resistance, something inside me shifts just a little. Not because the ideas are wrong. They are practical and necessary in any business. But a small voice inside me starts asking uncomfortable questions. Am I becoming a salesman? Am I pretending to be someone I am not? Do I actually belong in this room? And that is usually the moment the word shows up. Fraud. It feels strange to admit that, because I believe deeply in the work of Final Expense planning. I have seen too many families living through grief while also trying to figure out how to pay for a funeral. I have watched spouses quietly panic over finances while still trying to hold themselves together emotionally. I have seen delayed services, difficult decisions, and the heavy burden that falls on families who never expected to be making financial choices at the same moment they are saying goodbye. I know preparation matters. I know this work helps people. And yet the language of the industry sometimes feels foreign to instincts shaped by ministry rather than sales. Pastors learn to listen longer than they speak and to walk at the pace of the person in front of them, while sales training naturally emphasizes direction and outcomes. Those approaches are not enemies, but learning to live in both worlds creates tension. I am beginning to understand that the discomfort may actually be a sign that something important is still intact within me. Many people enter this field learning empathy as a professional skill. I am coming from the opposite direction. Compassion has always been the starting point. The real challenge is learning how preparation fits inside that compassion without losing its heart. I am not trying to sell peace of mind as a slogan. I am trying to help families avoid unnecessary suffering later. When I look at it that way, the work begins to feel familiar again. I am still sitting at tables listening to stories. I am still helping people face realities they would rather postpone. I am still walking with families through conversations about mortality, love, responsibility, and legacy. The difference is that now the care I offer happens before the funeral instead of after it. Maybe the reason I sometimes feel like a fraud is not because I do not belong in this work, but because I will always remember that there are real human stories behind every application and policy number. The tension I feel may simply be the growing edge of learning a new language while holding onto an old calling. I suspect that feeling may never disappear completely, and honestly, I hope it doesn’t. The day this work becomes only about production numbers instead of people is probably the day I should step away. Until then, I will keep learning the business side of things while remaining grounded in the part of me that believes this is, at its heart, an act of love. I may never sound like a traditional insurance agent, and perhaps that is exactly as it should be. Maybe I am simply a pastor who now helps families prepare for the moment when love has to carry on without them. I am still learning this work. Some days I sit in training taking notes and wondering if I am behind everyone else. Other days I sit with someone who tells me about their children, their health, or their quiet worry about becoming a burden someday, and in those moments the purpose becomes clear again. T he titles have changed over the years. Pastor. Celebrant. Now Final Expense Specialist. But the calling underneath those titles feels remarkably familiar. It has always been about helping people face hard realities with a little more peace and a little less fear. So I will keep showing up. I will keep learning. I will keep listening for the stories behind the paperwork and remembering that this work is not ultimately about policies or premiums. It is about love planning ahead. And if someday a family is able to grieve without financial panic, if a spouse can focus on remembering instead of worrying about bills, if peace arrives just a little sooner because a conversation happened in time, then maybe this work does belong to me after all.
There is a moment in almost every conversation when someone tilts their head and asks the question carefully, like they are not quite sure if they might accidentally offend me. “So… what do you do now? ” This used to be an easy answer. Depending on your faith background, I was a pastor, minister, preacher, or sometimes priest. Then I retired from the United Methodist Church and suddenly the answer got a little complicated. Now I have to think about it. I usually start by saying I am a celebrant, which means I then have to explain what a celebrant is. Yes, I officiate weddings and funerals, but it is different than being a minister. I even wrote a blog to explain that part of my life. It would probably be smarter if I just smiled and stopped talking, but I usually add that I also help families with final expense planning. That is often the moment their expression turns into polite confusion. People understand weddings and funerals. But final expense? That phrase floats in the air like a balloon nobody is quite sure who should grab until someone finally says it out loud. “So… are you a life insurance salesman? ” I smile and nod. Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yes, but not the version you are picturing. When many people hear “life insurance,” their brain pulls up the image of a pushy salesperson with a stack of forms ( think Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day ) and a conversation nobody wanted to have in the first place. I understand why that picture exists. I really do. But my version of this work did not start like that. It began in churches and funeral homes, in living rooms where families were exhausted, at kitchen tables covered with paperwork, and in quiet conversations that began with the sentence, “ We didn’t realize how expensive this would be. ” I officiated hundreds of funerals before I ever helped anyone buy a policy, and there was a pattern you could almost set your watch by. Some families were grieving and remembering, telling stories that somehow held both laughter and tears in the same breath. Other families were doing math. Hard math. The kind that sends people checking account balances and calculating what can wait and what cannot. Those are two very different kinds of grieving, and they lead to two very different funerals. I will never forget the first time that difference really hit me. A widow told me, very quietly, that she had managed to scrape together enough money to bury her husband. She said it like someone describing a marathon they had barely finished. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “Now I’m not sure how I’m going to pay the rest of the bills.” That moment followed me home. It sat with me at my desk and rode shotgun in my car for a long time, because grief is already heavy. Watching families carry financial stress on top of it felt like watching someone try to carry groceries, luggage, and a piano all at once. Something in me kept thinking there has to be a way to move the piano ahead of time. Final expense planning is not really about death. It is about the people who will still be here. The spouse who should not have to start a GoFundMe while planning a funeral, and the adult children who should be able to focus on saying goodbye instead of opening credit cards. It is the quiet gift of leaving things a little easier than we found them. I sometimes call it the Last Love Letter. Not the poetic kind, the practical kind. The kind that says, “I thought about you. I prepared for you. I wanted to leave you one less burden.” These days I talk with people who requested information, sometimes months ago. I make a lot of phone calls, leave a lot of voicemails, and send a lot of texts that begin with, “Hey, this is Marty…” Often they do not answer. Sometimes they hang up. Sometimes they say no. Sometimes they say, “I’ve been meaning to take care of this.” And occasionally someone says, “I’m really glad you called.” Those moments matter more than the rest combined, because every once in a while a future funeral gets lighter, and that feels like a continuation of the same calling I have always had, just from a different angle. When I was a pastor, I walked with families after a loss. Now, sometimes, I get to help them before one. The tools look different, but the heart behind it does not. If you ever find yourself wondering whether this is something you should think about, I am always happy to have a conversation. No pressure, no scripts, just a human conversation about taking care of the people we love.
Jason, a good friend on the team, has a mantra he shares with me when I am hitting a point of frustration. He smiles and simply says, “ Manifest it Marty! ”. He hasn’t said it just once, and when he says it, it isn’t meant as a joke. It really might be his mantra. Sometimes I wonder if I visited him in his home in South Carolina if those words would be hanging in the kitchen, the living room, and his office. Nike has their slogan. Jason has his. Just Manifest it! I’ll be honest. The first few times I heard it, I didn’t know what to do with that sentence. My theological side thought it sounded too much like the prosperity gospel. You know, if you have enough faith blah blah blah. It seemed to treat God and the universe like a giant vending machine. Put your money in, press B7, and get the outcome you ordered. But I have sat with too many families in funeral homes, in hospital waiting rooms, or simply in my office as they share their grief, frustrations, and pain to believe God works that way. The life I know about is too messy. Too hard. And yet, this other part of me couldn’t just roll my eyes either. Because I have seen the power belief has to change people. It doesn’t change them instantly or magically, but the change is real and too hard to ignore. I have watched people who believed they were loved begin to live like they were loved. I have watched couples who believed their marriage could heal start doing the small, uncomfortable work of healing. I have watched grieving families who believed they would make it through the worst season of their lives take the next step. Belief didn’t remove the pain. Belief didn’t erase the struggle. But it did change how they moved through it. It changes posture. It changes tone. It changes attitude. And over time, those small decisions quietly change outcomes. I have discovered that belief changes behavior. It changes the choices we make when no one is watching. It changes what we try. It changes how long we keep trying. And over time, behavior has a way of changing outcomes. But I still needed to understand better. And as I was mulling over Jason’s mantra, it hit me. My brain started thinking about a movie. Not just any movie, but probably one of my top ten of all time: The Shawshank Redemption. When people talk about manifesting, they picture vision boards and affirmations. My brain pictured a Raquel Welch poster and a rock hammer. If you know the movie, you get the image. If you know the movie, you also know the tension between the two main characters. Red believes hope is dangerous. He says hope gets men hurt. Hope, according to Red, has no place in prison. But Andy sees it differently. Andy believes that, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” And because of that belief, Andy lives like a free man long before he becomes one. He writes letters asking for library money. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. He helps the guards with their taxes and helps inmates get their GEDs. He plays opera over the loudspeakers because beauty still matters, even in prison. And at night, when no one is watching, he chips away at a wall. One tiny piece at a time. For decades. Andy doesn’t sit on his bunk visualizing freedom. He behaves like freedom is possible. As I thought about that movie, I finally could reconcile the idea of “ manifest it ” with my theological understanding. Maybe manifestation isn’t about magic or the prosperity gospel. Maybe it is about living like the story is not over yet. Because if we are honest, most of us have a wall somewhere. Maybe it is a situation that feels stuck. A time in our lives that feels heavy. A future we cannot quite see yet. Or maybe, like me, it is a phone call we are not sure anyone will answer. It would be easy to decide nothing will change. Close the book. Roll the credits. But Shawshank hope says keep showing up. Keep doing the small things that move life forward one inch at a time. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is action. It is the quiet refusal to believe the story is finished. Sometimes hope looks like prayer. Sometimes it looks like a phone call. And sometimes it looks like a man with a rock hammer, patiently chipping away at a wall. And maybe that is the Unlikely Altar hiding in plain sight.