Standing in the parlor at church that day was not unlike the many other occasions when I had attended a family upon the death of one they had loved. Moving from person to person, group to group, I greeted each with words of comfort, consolation, and hope. I was a pastor going about my normal pastoral work, preparing to begin the funeral rite for yet another saint of the church. Amid the whispers, the tears, the hugs, and even the laughter at memories shared, a pastor also hears many other things spoken in death that perhaps would never be spoken in life. There are truths finally told about the brokenness of the relationship between father and son, the private rage of a man whom others only knew from his public image as a jovial individual, the pain caused by things said long ago that were …