For the last few years our family has visited The Dalles, Oregon, for Memorial Day to be with my wife’s relatives and to decorate graves in the cemetery. One thing I notice as we visit that cemetery: When you’re in the western, older side of the cemetery, visitors are chattier, even happy, carrying on humorous conversations as they stand next to gravestones of people who died a hundred years ago. But, as you enter the newer portion of the cemetery where people have recently been buried, you feel the emotion around. You see families you don’t know, but you can tell: the sighs, the hugs, and the tears.

Bereavement hurts, even in the near vicinity of death. So some people never attend funerals and some never visit in hospitals or nursing homes. No matter how they protest they want to remembe…