Poetry Writing and the Discipline of Grief

I am fifty-two years old. I have directed funerals for more than twenty-five years. I know the sound of controlled crying the way some people know music. I know how polished wood reflects soft light. I know the hum behind the wall where refrigeration units run without pause. Most people who walk into a funeral home notice flowers first. I notice air pressure and posture.

The building is designed for composure. Soft beige walls. Muted carpets. Lighting that flatters faces made swollen by grief. The caskets shine under gentle bulbs that hide shadows. Everything is arranged to suggest steadiness. It is my job to embody that steadiness.

Families break in front of me. They accuse doctors. They accuse siblings. Sometimes they accuse me, as if death were a service error. I do not take it personally. At least outwardly. I keep my voice even. I guide them through paperwork. I explain timelines. I remind them gently when they must sign. I have mastered professional restraint the way some men master golf swings. My face remains still even when someone collapses into my suit jacket.

Over time you learn to hold sorrow without absorbing it. Or you convince yourself you have learned. There is a difference.

The funeral home smells faintly of disinfectant and lilies. I can walk through the prep room without flinching. I can discuss embalming fluid concentrations while eating lunch. The younger staff sometimes watch me as if I have grown calluses where nerves used to be. They are not wrong. You cannot survive twenty-five years in this profession without thickening something inside yourself.

What they do not see is how the silence lingers when I return home at night. The house feels louder than the funeral home because there is no controlled sorrow to manage. Only my own unexamined accumulation of it.

The shift began after a service for a woman who was fifty-three. One year older than me. She had short gray hair and hands that looked like they had worked hard for decades. Her husband stood beside the casket as if waiting for her to correct a mistake. He kept smoothing the satin lining near her shoulder. It was a small gesture. Repeated. Careful. As if he were straightening a blanket on a sleeping child.

I remained steady. I explained the order of service. I adjusted the floral spray when it tilted. I guided guests to sign the register. I did not falter. But when the doors closed and the hearse pulled away, something in me shifted. Not dramatically. Not visibly. It was more like a hairline crack beneath polished varnish.

That night I sat at my kitchen table long after the dishwasher stopped. I did not pour a drink. I did not turn on the television. I took out a legal pad and began writing. At first it was clumsy. Sentences that tried too hard. Words like loss and forever. It read like the back of a sympathy card. I almost tore the page out.

Instead I tried again. I forced myself to describe only what I had actually seen. The husband’s thumb pressing into satin. The slight indentation left behind. The fluorescent hum above the preparation room. The smell of carnations beginning to fade by afternoon. When I wrote those details, the page felt steadier.

I did not know it at the time, but that was my first serious attempt at poetry writing.

I learned quickly that this was not the same as venting. Complaints spill. Good lines hold. I began reading contemporary poets at night instead of watching the news, studying how restraint functioned in their work. Free verse felt closer to the rhythm of breath I recognized from viewing rooms, but I could see how much intention lived beneath what appeared simple. I started looking more deliberately at structure, revision practices, and examples of disciplined poetry writing so I could understand how imagery replaces explanation and how silence can carry weight without announcing itself. I noticed how line breaks create tension, how white space controls pace, and how implication often speaks more clearly than description. The silence on the page began to echo the silence after a family leaves, but now it felt shaped rather than accidental.

Specificity matters. Saying someone was gone too soon means nothing. Describing the way their coffee mug remained in the break room sink says more. Concrete images carry weight. Abstract sorrow floats away.

I cut adjectives. Most of them were unnecessary. Grief does not need decoration. It needs clarity. I revised obsessively, sometimes reducing a page to eight lines. I let implication replace explanation. I began to see that restraint on paper mirrors restraint in a chapel.

What surprised me was the discipline required. I had assumed writing would be release. Instead it demanded control. Measured phrasing. Intentional structure. A willingness to remove self-pity. In that way it resembled my profession more than I expected.

I returned to it the next night. And the night after that.

I began keeping a separate notebook just for the evenings after services that stayed with me. I did not label it anything dramatic. It sat in a drawer beside unpaid utility bills and spare batteries. During the day I continued my routine without change. I met with families at ten, twelve, and three. I arranged military honors. I smoothed disagreements between siblings over which photograph should sit beside the urn. I shook hands. I kept my shoulders squared. Nothing outward shifted.

But internally I had begun measuring moments differently. Instead of asking whether a service went smoothly, I found myself asking what detail lingered. The crease in a widow’s blouse sleeve. The way a son refused to approach the casket until everyone else had stepped back. These were not stories for conversation. They were fragments. Images that resisted summary.

I learned that when I tried to explain emotion directly, the lines collapsed. If I wrote, “He was devastated,” the sentence felt hollow. If I wrote, “He stood beside her and kept smoothing the satin near her shoulder as if it might wrinkle without him,” the feeling carried itself. I stopped naming feelings. I let actions suggest them.

The discipline reminded me of how we prepare a body. Excess is removed. Color is corrected subtly, not dramatically. You aim for naturalness, not spectacle. On the page, I began trimming anything that sounded like performance. Grief is already theatrical enough without my embellishment.

I read poets who wrote about hospitals, about parents, about war. None of them seemed to shout. The strongest lines were quiet and exact. I studied how they handled space. How a break in the middle of a thought could create pressure. A line ending on a verb feels unfinished, almost unstable. I started experimenting with that instability.

Poetry writing became an exercise in restraint. I would draft quickly, then spend three times as long cutting. Remove one adjective. Replace a broad word with a concrete one. Instead of “flowers,” write “white carnations with browning edges.” Instead of “sad,” describe the way someone grips the back of a chair.

There is a moral component to precision. If I exaggerate, I distort someone’s grief for my own expression. If I sentimentalize, I soften what should remain sharp. That awareness unsettled me. I realized that even private writing carries responsibility. The dead are not metaphors. They were people whose families trusted me.

A few weeks after that first notebook entry, the widow from the service returned to pick up paperwork. She stood at the counter with her back straight, her voice controlled. She asked clear questions about headstone timelines and payment schedules. Nothing in her posture invited comfort. She carried herself the way I did.

When I handed her the receipt, our fingers brushed briefly. An ordinary moment. But I recognized something in her expression. A tightening, a deliberate composure. It mirrored my own professional face. I heard myself say, almost casually, that some people find writing helpful after a loss. I did not elaborate. I did not offer instruction. I simply said that putting details on paper can make the days feel less shapeless.

It was a small boundary shift. Funeral directors provide information about cremation permits and obituary deadlines. We do not typically suggest personal coping practices. As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt the faint click of a door opening.

She did not react dramatically. She nodded once. “I used to write a little,” she said. “In college.” Then she folded the receipt and placed it in her purse with deliberate care.

I told myself that was the end of it. A brief suggestion. Harmless. I returned to my office and reviewed the afternoon schedule. But that evening, when I opened my notebook, her posture appeared on the page. Not her face. Not her name. Just the image of someone holding herself together with visible effort.

I wrote about thresholds. About standing between rooms. The front chapel with its warm lamps and polished wood. The back corridor with its stainless steel tables and quiet machinery. I wrote about how a person can exist in both spaces without fully belonging to either.

The next morning I revised the poem and removed any hint that it was about a specific person. I cut a line that sounded accusatory. I deleted another that sounded self-congratulatory. Defensive language is easy to spot if you read slowly. It often hides behind long explanations. I shortened everything.

Weeks passed before I heard from her again. The email arrived late at night. Subject line: “You mentioned writing.” Inside was a short poem. It was simple and unpolished. The images were broad. She used phrases like empty house and endless silence. But beneath them there was something steady. An attempt at control.

I read it twice before responding. My reply was measured. I suggested focusing on one room in the house instead of the entire emptiness. I encouraged her to replace the word endless with something she could point to. I mentioned how line breaks can create pause without stating that there is a pause. I avoided praise that would sound indulgent. I avoided criticism that would sound superior.

When I pressed send, I felt the second door open.

The exchange continued over the next month. She sent revisions. I responded with suggestions about tightening language. I emphasized the value of cutting sentimentality. We discussed structure more than emotion. I kept reminding myself that this was about craft. About clarity. About discipline.

Yet I noticed that I anticipated her emails. I told myself it was intellectual engagement. A shared focus on poetry writing. It felt safer to frame it that way. The conversations remained centered on imagery and lineation. But beneath the analysis there was a current neither of us named.

One afternoon, as I entered her name on my calendar for a follow-up meeting about the headstone inscription, my coworker paused beside my desk. He glanced at the screen and then at me. His comment was casual. Too casual. “You’re thorough,” he said. “Most families don’t need that many appointments.”

The remark was not an accusation. It did not need to be. I felt exposed in a way I could not immediately articulate. The professional lines I had drawn so carefully in my writing felt less certain in practice.

That night I did not draft a poem about her. I drafted one about doors. About how some remain slightly open even when you believe they are shut. I wrote three pages and cut them down to ten lines. I removed any justification. I left only the image of a man standing between two rooms, listening to the hum behind the wall.

We met for coffee on a Tuesday afternoon because neither of us wanted the implication of evening. The cafe was bright and public, with small round tables and the sound of milk steaming behind the counter. I arrived early. I always arrive early. Habit from years of unlocking doors before families pull into the parking lot. She walked in carrying a notebook that looked newer than mine. We shook hands like colleagues.

We spoke first about ordinary things. Weather. Traffic. The cost of granite markers. Then she opened her notebook and turned it toward me. The pages were filled with crossed-out lines. Arrows. Margins crowded with alternate words. I felt something close to respect. She was revising seriously.

Her newest poem focused on a single chair at her kitchen table. She described how the indentation in the cushion remained long after he stopped sitting there. It was the strongest image she had written so far. I told her so. I also told her to remove two lines that explained what the chair meant. The image did not require translation.

She listened carefully. Not deferentially. Just attentive. When she disagreed, she said so. The conversation stayed within craft. We discussed enjambment. How breaking a line before a noun can create a pause that feels like breath caught in the throat. How overusing metaphor can blur a clear picture. I told her that if a comparison feels clever, it is probably unnecessary.

Underneath the exchange there was a low tension. Not overt. Not dramatic. It was simply the awareness that we were no longer strictly director and widow. We were two people sitting across from each other, discussing lines about absence.

After that afternoon, the emails changed slightly. Not in content, but in cadence. They arrived more frequently. I responded more quickly. I began to anticipate the sound of the notification on my phone. I justified it as shared dedication to craft. We were refining language. We were examining imagery. It was productive.

But productivity can disguise motive. I knew that from years of staying busy during slow weeks at the funeral home. Organizing files feels purposeful. It can also be avoidance.

One evening she wrote, “Do you recommend this to everyone?” I stared at the sentence for a long time. It appeared at the end of a paragraph about a new draft. The question stood alone, almost like a line break.

When we met again, she asked it aloud. “Do you recommend writing to all the widows?”

The cafe was quieter that day. The question did not accuse. It did not accuse because it did not need to. It carried weight precisely because it was simple. I did not answer immediately. Silence in conversation feels longer than silence on the page.

I considered telling her that writing is a common suggestion. That many grief counselors encourage journaling. That I only meant to be helpful. All of those statements would have been partially true. None would have been complete.

“No,” I said finally. “I don’t recommend it to everyone.”

She held my gaze without blinking. “Why me?”

The honest answer was uncomfortable. Because I recognized my own restraint in her. Because she stood beside the casket with the same controlled posture I use behind it. Because something in that mirrored composure unsettled me. I did not phrase it that way. I said that I sensed she might benefit from structured expression. It was accurate but insufficient.

That night I wrote longer than usual. Not about her directly, but about proximity. About how standing near someone’s grief for weeks can blur the edges between empathy and identification. I wrote lines that felt self-protective. Then I cut them. Defensive language appears as explanation. If I found myself justifying a decision within the poem, I removed the justification and kept the action.

In difficult poems, understatement carries more truth than confession. If I wrote, “I was drawn to her vulnerability,” it sounded dramatic and self-aware in a way that felt false. If I wrote, “I scheduled another meeting,” the implication was sharper. Restraint on the page can expose more than overt admission.

I began revising with stricter rules. Remove any line that casts me as rescuer. Remove any line that casts her as fragile. Avoid romantic phrasing. Eliminate metaphors that soften the ethical tension. Let the discomfort remain visible.

Poetry writing, when taken seriously, does not allow convenient narratives. It does not permit the writer to appear noble without evidence. Each revision strips away self-serving angles. I found myself crossing out entire stanzas that felt indulgent. What remained were spare images. A calendar with her name typed in neat letters. A coffee cup cooling untouched. The low hum of refrigeration through the wall of my office.

The next time we met, she seemed more guarded. She spoke less about imagery and more about boundaries. She said she did not want to feel like a project. The word settled heavily between us. I told her she was not. Even as I said it, I examined whether the statement was fully true.

There is a moral ambiguity in offering guidance to someone still in early grief. Advice can become intimacy quickly. I had convinced myself that focusing on craft kept the relationship neutral. But neutrality is not determined by subject matter. It is determined by motive.

I returned home that evening unsettled. I drafted a poem about thresholds again, but this time the door in the poem was partly open. I wrote three versions of the final stanza. In one, the speaker steps through. In another, he closes the door firmly. In the third, he stands without moving. The third felt most honest. Ambiguity is sometimes the truest position.

I revised for hours. Removed blame. Removed self-pity. Removed any phrasing that suggested inevitability. There is nothing inevitable about crossing a boundary. It is always a choice, even if gradual.

When I finished, the poem was spare and unsettled. No resolution. Just an image of a man listening to machinery behind a wall while someone waits in the next room. I read it aloud softly. The cadence felt steady. Controlled.

Control has always been my profession. Now it was becoming my method of self-examination.

She pulled back gradually. The emails slowed. The revisions became shorter. When she did write, her tone shifted from collaborative to cautious. There was no confrontation. Just distance introduced in small, careful increments. I recognized the strategy. I have watched families create space from each other during arrangements when tension threatens to surface. Distance can be an act of preservation.

Her final message before the pause was brief. She said she needed to focus on her own process without outside input. She added that our conversations had begun to feel complicated. The word sat on the screen longer than the others. Complicated implies more than inconvenience. It suggests entanglement.

I did not argue. I did not attempt to redefine the situation. I replied that I understood and that I respected her need for space. The message was concise. Professional. Controlled. After sending it, I remained at my desk long after closing time, listening to the faint hum through the wall.

There is a particular loneliness in being trusted with other people’s sorrow while having no sanctioned outlet for your own. For years I believed that professional composure was enough. That steady posture and even tone were substitutes for interior processing. They are not. They are containment, not resolution.

That night I wrote what would become my strongest poem so far. I did not begin with her. I began with accumulation. Twenty-five years of services. Hundreds of widows. Thousands of handshakes. The weight of names signed into guest books. I described how sorrow can adhere quietly, the way formaldehyde clings faintly to clothing even after you leave the prep room.

I forced myself to avoid abstraction. Instead of writing about burden, I wrote about the small indentation left in my suit jacket where grieving heads have rested. Instead of writing about exhaustion, I described the way my shoulders remain squared even when no one is watching. Concrete detail anchors moral complexity.

Halfway through the draft I realized the poem was trying to defend me. Lines appeared that framed my actions as inevitable consequences of compassion. I crossed them out. Self-justification weakens a poem. It signals that the writer is arguing rather than observing.

I returned to basics. Image. Structure. Restraint. I reduced three pages to fourteen lines. Then to twelve. I cut a metaphor comparing grief to tide because it sounded lyrical in a way that felt dishonest. I removed a stanza that suggested loneliness excused misjudgment. What remained was quieter and less flattering.

Poetry writing at this stage no longer felt like release. It felt like examination. Each revision forced me to confront motive without cushioning it. If I was drawn to her composure because it mirrored mine, that fact needed to stand unadorned. If I crossed a boundary incrementally, that progression needed to appear plainly.

I noticed that the strongest lines were the ones that did not attempt to conclude. A line such as “I have held so much that I forgot what was mine” carried more weight than any explanation that followed it. So I let it stand alone. Silence after a line can function like silence in a chapel. It allows the reader to complete the thought.

When the poem felt stable, I waited three days before rereading it. Distance clarifies excess. On the fourth evening I made two final cuts and stopped. Stopping is difficult. There is always one more adjective to remove, one more phrase to tighten. But overworking can become another form of avoidance.

I sent the poem to her without commentary. No preface. No apology embedded in explanation. Just the text in the body of the email. I did not frame it as an attempt to repair anything. It was simply the most honest articulation I had produced.

She replied the next afternoon. Her response was measured. She said the poem felt clear. She said she recognized parts of herself in the image of restraint. She admitted that loneliness had influenced her as well. The tone was neither warm nor cold. It was steady.

We agreed, without dramatic declaration, to slow down deliberately. No private meetings. No frequent exchanges. If we spoke, it would be within the context of my office and strictly about logistics. The decision did not feel triumphant. It felt responsible.

In the weeks that followed, I noticed a change in my work. Not outwardly. Families still received the same calm demeanor. The chapel remained softly lit. The polished wood reflected faces made tender by loss. But internally I felt less certain of my own invulnerability. That uncertainty was not weakness. It was awareness.

I continued my practice each night. I wrote about casket hinges. About the weight of flower stands when you carry them alone after a service. About the way names are spelled carefully on memorial folders and then disappear from conversation within months. Specific images prevent grand conclusions.

I also began writing about desire in indirect ways. Not romance. Not longing framed as destiny. Instead I described proximity. How two people can sit across a table discussing line breaks while avoiding the deeper question of why they continue to meet. Indirection allows complexity without sensationalism.

Understatement became my primary tool. If a line sounded dramatic, I shortened it. If it sounded sentimental, I replaced the adjective with a physical detail. Moral ambiguity does not require ornate language. It requires clarity and restraint.

I started reading my drafts aloud in the quiet of my kitchen. Listening for excess. Listening for defense. Listening for any phrase that attempted to elevate me above ordinary human frailty. When I heard one, I removed it.

There is no absolution in this process. Writing does not undo blurred lines. It does not justify them. It does, however, illuminate them. On the page I could see precisely where I stepped beyond neutral ground. That visibility, uncomfortable as it was, felt necessary.

The funeral home continued its steady rhythm. Doors opened. Doors closed. Machinery hummed. I stood between rooms as I always have. The difference now was that I no longer believed myself separate from the sorrow I manage. I am implicated in it. Not as cause, but as participant.

Participation requires responsibility. Responsibility requires clarity. And clarity demands disciplined attention to language.

There was no dramatic conclusion with her. No late-night confession. No final meeting that resolved tension into something cinematic. We saw each other once more in my office to finalize the headstone inscription. She chose a simple line. No embellishment. No metaphor. Just his name, the years, and a brief phrase about devotion. When she signed the paperwork, her hand was steady.

As she stood to leave, there was a pause that might have become something else in another context. Instead, she thanked me for my help. The word help carried both sincerity and limit. I nodded. Professional posture restored.

After she left, I remained in the office longer than necessary. The hallway lights hummed faintly. I noticed that the indentation in the carpet near the doorway had deepened over the years from repeated foot traffic. Small impressions accumulate quietly.

I returned home and opened my notebook. I did not write about her directly. I wrote about separation. About how stepping back can feel less decisive than stepping forward. There is no applause for restraint. No visible marker when a boundary is respected. The absence of action rarely receives recognition.

In earlier drafts, I might have framed this as sacrifice. That language would have been dishonest. It was not sacrifice. It was correction. Correction is less flattering. It implies miscalculation.

My revisions grew more severe. I began approaching each draft as if I were an editor with no patience for indulgence. Does this line clarify or excuse? Does this image illuminate or distract? Am I naming emotion because I cannot trust the image to carry it? The answers were often uncomfortable.

Poetry writing became less about expression and more about calibration. I examined pacing the way I examine seating arrangements before a service. Too much density in one section and the reader suffocates. Too much explanation and tension dissolves. Space is not emptiness. It is structure.

I experimented with shorter lines. Then with longer ones that nearly ran to the margin. I noticed that breaking a sentence mid-thought can mimic hesitation. Leaving a stanza unresolved can mirror unresolved ethics. Form is not decorative. It carries meaning as surely as word choice does.

At the funeral home, I often remind younger staff that our tone matters as much as our instructions. The same is true on the page. If the voice strains for sympathy, the reader withdraws. If it remains too distant, the reader feels excluded. Balance requires attention.

There were evenings when I felt tempted to stop writing altogether. The process revealed more than it soothed. It would have been easier to return to silence. But silence, unexamined, had already led me to misjudge proximity once. Avoidance is not neutrality.

I began drafting a longer piece about the dual rooms in which I operate. The front chapel with its soft lighting and polished wood. The back preparation room with its stainless surfaces and fluorescent glare. I described how I move between them daily without visible transition. Then I asked, quietly, whether I move between professional and personal boundaries with equal awareness.

I removed the question from the final draft. Questions can feel like appeals for forgiveness. Instead, I ended the poem with an image of a door left slightly ajar and the faint sound of machinery beyond it. The implication was sufficient.

Months passed. We did not resume private exchanges. Occasionally she sent a brief note about administrative matters. I replied with efficiency. The rhythm of my days stabilized. Outwardly, nothing had changed.

Internally, however, I recognized a sharper awareness of motive. When a family member lingered after others left, I paid closer attention to my own posture. When someone confided personal loneliness, I listened without offering more than was appropriate. Professional boundaries are not coldness. They are safeguards.

I continued reading contemporary poets. Many wrote about moral uncertainty without resolving it. I found comfort in that restraint. Resolution is often artificial. Life rarely concludes cleanly. On the page, allowing ambiguity to stand can be an act of honesty.

In one draft I compared grief to a stain that never fully lifts. I cut the comparison. It implied permanence in a way that felt melodramatic. Instead I described how certain suits in my closet still carry faint traces of floral scent long after services conclude. The detail was quieter. More accurate.

Accuracy has become my primary discipline. Not confession. Not catharsis. Precision. If I am drawn to someone’s composure, I state it plainly. If I am unsettled by mirrored restraint, I describe the posture, not the feeling. The reader can infer the rest.

There is something humbling about recognizing that I am not immune to the emotional currents that pass through my workplace daily. For years I believed mastery of tone equaled mastery of self. It does not. Composure is external. Integrity is internal. They overlap, but they are not identical.

The funeral home remains unchanged. The chapel lights still dim at the appropriate moment. The register book still opens to crisp pages. Families still weep and sometimes accuse. I remain steady. But steadiness now includes self-scrutiny.

I understand that the act of shaping lines on a page mirrors the act of guiding a service. Both require awareness of what to include and what to leave unsaid. Both demand respect for those who trust you in vulnerable moments. Both expose motive if examined closely.

There is no triumphant ending to this account. I did not emerge purified or transformed. I emerged more aware. Awareness is quieter than redemption. It does not erase missteps. It prevents repetition.

I will continue directing funerals. I will continue listening to the hum behind the wall. And each evening, when the house settles and the air grows still, I will open the notebook and measure my own language with the same care I ask of others.

There are afternoons when the chapel sits empty between services and the stillness feels almost artificial. The lights remain dimmed. The podium stands centered. The air conditioning cycles on and off with a low mechanical sigh. In those pauses I sometimes walk the length of the aisle alone, not to inspect anything in particular, but to measure the space again. Measurement has become instinct.

For years I measured only logistics. How many chairs. How long the eulogy. Whether the floral spray obstructed the family’s view. Now I measure internal response. When a widow grips my hand longer than necessary, I note the duration. When a son thanks me with unusual intensity, I observe my own reaction. Attention prevents drift.

I once believed drift was subtle and accidental. Now I understand it often begins with rational language. A small accommodation framed as kindness. An extra conversation justified as support. The slope is rarely steep at first.

On the page, I watch for similar rationalizations. A line that casts me as uniquely understanding. A phrase that elevates professional empathy into something exceptional. I remove them. Not because empathy is wrong, but because exaggeration distorts proportion. Proportion matters.

I have come to see that poetry writing is less about emotion and more about containment. Emotion is abundant in my profession. It floods rooms daily. The challenge is shaping it without falsifying it. If I allow excess sentiment into a draft, the piece weakens. If I strip it too severely, it grows sterile. Balance requires revision.

Revision is not glamorous. It is patient work. Returning to a line and asking whether it earns its place. Removing a stanza that once felt essential. Accepting that the first draft is almost always self-protective. The second draft is often defensive. The third begins to approach clarity.

I have learned to wait before finalizing anything. A poem drafted in heightened emotion rarely withstands rereading. Time exposes indulgence. I place drafts in a folder and return days later. When I can read without flinching, I know the language has steadied.

The same principle applies at work. When conflict arises between family members, immediate reaction often escalates tension. Pausing, allowing silence to stretch briefly, frequently resolves more than quick reassurance. Silence can be instructive. On the page, white space functions similarly.

I no longer view writing as escape from my profession. It is extension. Both require composure under strain. Both require sensitivity to nuance. Both demand that I resist the temptation to insert myself unnecessarily into other people’s narratives.

Occasionally I revisit the poem I sent her. I do not read it with regret. I read it as record. A marker of a moment when I recognized blurred lines and chose correction. It is not my finest piece technically. A few phrases still feel slightly exposed. But its restraint holds.

I think about how easily the situation might have unfolded differently. How incremental choices accumulate. There is no dramatic villainy in misjudgment. Often there is only gradual proximity left unexamined. Awareness interrupts that pattern.

Some evenings I draft pieces unrelated to any specific service. I write about the way light reflects off varnished wood at dusk. About the weight of guest books stacked in storage. About the faint indentation on my office carpet where I stand during consultations. Objects absorb history quietly. So do people.

I avoid overt moral statements. If I write, “I learned my lesson,” the line collapses under its own certainty. Instead I describe how I now double-check calendar entries, how I keep office doors slightly more open during conversations, how I decline invitations that extend beyond necessity. Action implies learning more effectively than declaration.

In recent months I have noticed a subtle shift in my sense of self. Not dramatic transformation. Simply a clearer delineation between empathy and involvement. I can sit with a grieving spouse without imagining parallel futures. I can offer resources without inserting personal narrative. These distinctions sound simple. They are not.

Precision in language trains precision in conduct. If I tolerate vague phrasing in a draft, I become comfortable with vague boundaries in life. If I insist on exact words, I become attentive to exact actions. The disciplines reinforce each other.

I sometimes wonder whether I would have confronted this ambiguity without the practice of sustained writing. Perhaps eventually. But writing accelerates exposure. It forces motive into visible form. A page does not accept evasive answers. It reveals them.

The funeral home remains a place of controlled atmosphere. Polished wood. Soft lighting. The steady hum behind the wall. Families enter carrying shock and leave carrying absence. I stand in between, steady as always. The difference now is that I do not confuse steadiness with immunity.

There is no comfort in admitting susceptibility. But there is clarity. And clarity, though quiet, feels solid.

When I sit at my kitchen table at night, pen in hand, I no longer expect relief. I expect scrutiny. I expect to cut more than I keep. I expect to find small traces of ego woven into lines that appear innocent. And I expect to remove them.

Both of my vocations require the same posture: attentive, restrained, aware of consequence. In the chapel I guide families through ritual without centering myself. On the page I guide language through revision without flattering myself. Each act demands care.

I do not know whether I will ever publish these pieces. Publication is not the aim. Integrity is. The aim is to ensure that what remains on the page aligns with what remains in practice. That alignment is ongoing work.

Tomorrow morning I will unlock the front doors at eight. I will straighten programs on the welcome table. I will greet another family whose grief feels newly catastrophic. I will offer steady tone and measured guidance. And later, when the day closes and the machinery hums softly in the background, I will return to the notebook.

Not to absolve myself. Not to dramatize. But to continue the careful work of separating what belongs to others from what belongs to me.

I used to believe longevity in this profession meant thick skin. That was the phrase older directors used when I first started. Develop thick skin. Do not absorb what is not yours. Do not carry it home. At twenty-seven, that advice sounded practical. At fifty-two, it sounds incomplete. Thick skin can dull perception. What I needed was not insulation. It was discernment.

Discernment requires attention. Attention requires discipline. Discipline, I have learned, grows through repetition. Unlock the doors. Straighten the chairs. Guide the family. Return home. Open the notebook. Revise. Repeat. The pattern is not glamorous, but it is stabilizing.

Some nights I reread early drafts from years ago. They are heavy with explanation. I tried to justify my distance from grief as professionalism. I tried to elevate composure into virtue. Those poems collapse under their own insistence. They tell the reader what to think instead of allowing the image to carry weight.

Now I trust the image more than the declaration. A suit jacket slightly indented at the shoulder. A calendar entry typed too carefully. A door left ajar with light from the chapel spilling faintly into the hallway. If I arrange these details with care, the ethical tension reveals itself without commentary.

There is a temptation, especially in reflective work, to end with redemption. To suggest that misjudgment produced growth and therefore justifies itself. I resist that framing. Misjudgment remains misjudgment. Growth does not erase it. It simply reduces the likelihood of repetition.

When I think about her now, I do not imagine alternate paths. I think about the restraint that followed. The mutual recognition that proximity required caution. That recognition feels more honest than any imagined romance would have been. It sits quietly, without narrative flourish.

I continue to revise the long poem about accumulated sorrow. Every few months I adjust a line. Remove a word. Alter a break. The piece grows leaner over time. Lean language feels closer to truth. Excess feels like performance.

In directing funerals, performance is subtle but present. We stage lighting. We coordinate music. We guide speakers toward a microphone at the correct moment. Ritual contains grief within recognizable form. Without form, grief can overwhelm. Structure is not artificial. It is protective.

The same is true in poetry writing. Structure holds emotion so it does not spill unchecked. A deliberate line break can contain intensity more effectively than a paragraph of explanation. A well-placed silence can convey hesitation without dramatizing it. Craft does not diminish feeling. It concentrates it.

I have come to respect that concentration. It mirrors what I ask of myself in the chapel. Speak only what is necessary. Do not elaborate beyond purpose. Allow others to occupy the center. That restraint once felt purely professional. Now it feels ethical.

There are days when the work feels mechanical. Paperwork. Logistics. Schedules. There are nights when the writing feels equally mechanical. Cut. Rearrange. Tighten. But within repetition there is subtle refinement. Each small adjustment accumulates.

I no longer seek emotional catharsis at the kitchen table. I seek accuracy. If a line suggests I am immune to the currents around me, I remove it. If a stanza implies that understanding grants permission, I delete it. Integrity on the page reinforces integrity in practice.

Some people assume writing about one’s profession risks exploitation. That concern is valid. I avoid identifiable detail. I shift specifics. I refuse to turn private grief into spectacle. The aim is not to narrate others’ suffering. It is to examine my own responses to it.

Examining response requires humility. I am not the center of the stories that pass through my building. I am a facilitator. A guide through logistics and ritual. The page reminds me of that proportion. When I overemphasize my role in a poem, the draft weakens. When I step back, the piece strengthens.

Perhaps that is the quiet lesson threaded through both vocations. Step back when appropriate. Hold space without occupying it. Shape form without claiming ownership of the emotion within it.

I sometimes stand alone in the chapel after closing, lights dimmed, programs stacked neatly on the table. The polished wood reflects faint outlines. The air carries only the low mechanical hum from behind the wall. In that quiet, I recognize that the room does not belong to me. It belongs to the families who pass through it briefly.

The same is true of the page. It does not exist to justify me. It exists to hold language carefully. If I use it to excuse myself, it hardens. If I use it to examine myself, it clarifies.

I do not know how many more years I will remain in this profession. It has shaped my posture, my tone, even the cadence of my thoughts. I suspect I will always hear the faint hum of machinery when a room grows too still. I suspect I will always measure words before speaking.

What I know with certainty is that disciplined writing has altered the way I move through moral uncertainty. It does not grant absolution. It does not erase tension. It sharpens awareness. It exposes ego where I would prefer not to see it. It forces me to revise not only sentences, but behavior.

Both of my callings demand care. Both demand restraint. Both require knowing when to step forward and when to step back. In the chapel, stepping back allows a family to grieve without interference. On the page, stepping back allows truth to stand without embellishment.

I will continue unlocking doors each morning. I will continue arranging chairs and smoothing programs. And each evening, I will continue returning to the notebook, trimming language until it reflects something close to honest proportion.

There is no applause for that work. Only steadiness. Only the quiet satisfaction of alignment between what I say and what I do.

For now, that is sufficient.