We had a family come visit us a year ago and inquire about a memorial for their young son. Unfortunately I was not in the office when they came and never had a chance to speak to them. All I had was a note with their names, the name of their deceased 18 month-old son and the information they wanted on the memorial. The only thing special they mentioned was Lightning McQueen, the cool red car from the movie “Cars”.
I am certain they were thinking of an image of Lightning McQueen with their son’s name and dates engraved on the stone. Maybe something like this:
That’s a nice memorial; it is simple and is likely what even you were thinking the memorial would look like. A typical, standard headstone.
But then I thought about it for a moment and asked myself a question: Why would they drive 6 hours to visit us? There are memorial companies way closer than us; why did they come? What were they saying to me?
There were the things they did not say to me. They didn’t tell me what the memorial should look like; they didn’t tell me what color it should be; they didn’t tell me how large or small it should be. What they did tell me was their son was important, that he was way more valuable than any discomfort experienced by a 12 hour round trip drive. At least that’s what I heard. I also heard, “We don’t know anything about this. We’ve seen headstones before and if that’s all that’s out there, then we’ll take it. But if there’s some other way to express our love for our son besides a regular, run-of-the-mill headstone, can you help us do that?”
So here’s how we did just that:
So listen. Listen closely. You may hear something that wasn’t even said.