Respect For the Dead

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Stopping Traffic For Grief
By Rev. Cindy Maddox

To the middle-aged woman who gestured angrily and yelled as we passed...

To the 30-something man in the power suit who honked and forced his black SUV through our line...

To the person who tried to pass us and then moved his car into our lane to block our progress...

Perhaps you don’t know. Perhaps you didn’t recognize the hearse and the flapping flags on the first few cars. Perhaps you didn’t notice that we all had our lights on and our hazards flashing. Perhaps your mama never taught you to show respect to the dead by showing kindness to the grieving.


You couldn’t know, of course, that the woman inside the hearse was only 20 years old. You couldn’t know that she leaves behind parents and siblings and a young husband and a one-year-old baby girl. You couldn’t know anything about the person in that hearse or the many people who followed. But you still could have stopped. You could have waited. You could have recognized that someone else’s pain was greater than your need to get to lunch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-cindy-maddox/stopping-traffic-for-grief_b_10971440.html