My husband is a funeral pastor. Neither of us knew he would become one when we first started dating, he with his wild mop of hair and orange Birkenstocks. Nor did we know it when he got his tattoos: the cross on his wrist, our initials in katakana on his arm, and most un-pastorly of all, the giant glitched Stitch on his calf laughing maniacally.
He was an ACS boy who went to church with his grandparents, swerved predictably off the straight path, and crawled back to Jesus when he survived a drunk-driving accident that totalled his dad's car. New resolve led him to campus Christian meetings where we were thrown together as unlikely orientation group leaders. He had golden hair and nary a knack for serious Christian camps. I was an art student with rimmed black liner and sympathy for bad-boys-turned-good. In a sea of the most decent praying boys and girls, it's like we were meant to be partners.
He graduated and became an accountant, wearing slim-fit M&S shirts cuffed at the elbows. Then he took a pay-cut to be a secondary school counsellor. Parents and teachers didn’t take him seriously because of his boyish face, despite the polo t-shirts and pants. But the kids loved hanging out in his office every break they got.
It seemed natural then, that he took on the role of Youth Superintendent in church. With a uniform of t-shirts and basketball shoes, he looked every bit the energetic mascot the church had been hoping for.
Our Philippines stint made him give up the role to another young father with a love for hipster pastor fashion. When we came back, however, they had to give him the pastoral duties that a retired staff had left behind. And that is how our big life plot twist happened: my husband became a funeral pastor.
His first funeral coordination was a sartorial disaster. What they forget to tell you about funerals is they can happen suddenly. With no time to find appropriate clothes, he scrambled together an oxford shirt and a pair of tight forest-green pants that wouldn’t quite stay up. He had only two belts. One was red canvas with the white printed words, “STAY COOL. BE SAFE.” The second was in brown leather with red, blue and white embroidered aztec print. With the aztec print belt and a ridiculously skinny hipster tie, he conducted his first funeral.
Another time we ransacked the house for a funeral-appropriate bag for his laptop, after a colleague once offered to carry his festive Adidas Kids backpack at a wake so he wouldn't look like a misplaced student. All of our bags were multi-coloured, floral, neon, or leopard-print. Finally I found a free canvas bag we got from buying hay for our rabbit. It had the words “Oxbow” and a guinea pig on one side of it, but one could wear it printed-side-in and get a sturdy green-and-cream tote. “This is your best option.” He reluctantly concurred.
Several funerals later, we had curated a uniform of no-iron shirts, plain brown belt and navy blue bag, ready to go at any notice. Despite this, families often looked dismayed when he showed up and introduced himself as the one giving the homily. He had to tell them he was almost forty and that he was a full-time church staff, not an intern they’d sent. Sometimes it helped when his mask came down and they saw that he had the jowl of a grown man.
He looks the part now, and he announces condolences slowly, at an octave lower than his usual high-powered rally cry. I'm proud of him, this man who revamped his wardrobe to do his best in a role he's still uncertain of. To commemorate this work, he got a tattoo of a red and blue church on his arm. You can change the shirt, but you can never change the man.
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