In a funeral home chapel in Peachtree Corners, mourners gathered for Jonathan Erik Locke’s final send-off. Photos attached to poster boards gave attendees glimpses of happier times: Locke as an adorable baby, as a child in a baseball uniform, as a grown-up posing with loved ones, friends and work colleagues.
Standing at a podium at the front of the room, retired pastor Michael McCullar spoke glowingly of Locke, who died unexpectedly two weeks before his 42nd birthday. There was his “brilliant decision” to attend Auburn University, the minister reminded those grieving, pausing to ask for the school’s requisite battle cry, “War Eagle!” Mostly, McCullar praised Locke’s big heart, generous spirit and “unique compassion that led to a willingness to help people in need.”
In those moments, it might have been easy for some mourners to forget what McCullar had told them at the beginning of the service — that he was eulogizing a man he’d never met.
McCullar has presided over funerals, celebrations of life and memorial services for roughly 50 strangers over the past 18 months.
Often, he said, “I’m the only person in the room who did not know the person in life.”
It’s a situation those in the funeral industry say is increasingly common. Fewer Americans regularly attend weekly religious services, and more than a quarter say they have no religious affiliation. That’s a stark difference from the mid-1990s, when the share of unaffiliated Americans was just 12%, according to the Pew Research Center.
Still, even if fewer people see a need for religion in their everyday life, many still want to hear the comforting words of a religious leader when a loved one dies. That’s when some area funeral homes turn to McCullar and others.
He said he has unexpectedly become “a go-to memorial service guy.”
“Everybody needs a moment of celebration at their death,” he said, “because everybody matters.”
He customizes what he says about each person, includes solace from the Bible and pauses for songs and tributes from loved ones.
But he almost always begins and ends ceremonies the same way. He starts by saying the name of the deceased. And finishes by reciting the words of a favorite: Winnie the Pooh.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
‘First few calls are the hardest’
More than 56% of consumers surveyed this year say they have attended a funeral officiated by someone who wasn’t a member of the clergy, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Family members and friends are increasingly likely to be the ones doing much of the speaking.
Some find more meaning in secular, deeply personalized goodbyes. Others want consolation from a religious leader, but don’t know where to turn. Funeral homes often make recommendations.
Sam Lay, the general manager for Crowell Brothers Funeral Home in Gwinnett County, has been in the industry for 20 years and has worked with perhaps 200 pastors. He said his favorite is McCullar, who also works with other funeral homes. “He makes people feel comfortable.”
So much so that, at the end of the services, attendees sometimes ask McCullar to officiate their funerals whenever it’s their time, Lay said.
McCullar, who retired as a pastor after nearly three decades at Johns Creek Baptist Church, sees his responsibility as this: to ferret out the essence of deceased strangers, then highlight the best in them in a way that creates a lasting legacy.
As a kid, McCullar dreamed of being a cop. Instead, he became a preacher after “being hit by the God bus” as a young man. Years later at the Johns Creek church, he officiated funerals, often splitting duties with another pastor. Almost always, the services were for people he knew — usually members of the congregation.
Now at 69, he’s the lead chaplain and community advocate for the Johns Creek Police Department. It’s a job that means he is never far from the specter of trauma, grief and death.
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC
Walking into the lives of strangers in the midst of trauma isn’t easy. But when it comes to officiating funerals, McCullar said he’s honed a process.
He talks with families repeatedly in the limited days he has to prepare before a funeral. “The first few calls are the hardest ones because they break down and cry,” he said.
He gently probes for information about the person who died. “Tell me every good story that you can,” he often says. But also, “tell me about their bad traits.”
Maybe a third of the time, he finds family members didn’t have a good relationship with the deceased. McCullar reads obituaries and tributes, and looks at photos of the person he never knew.
He writes and rewrites what he plans to say. He prays on it before sharing it with the bereaved family. And sometimes, in the hour before a service begins, he sits in his parked truck and makes last-minute tweaks, sharpening a thought, swapping out a quote or Bible verse.
His preparation often takes six hours. He’s paid $350.
He’s guided the final ceremonies for babies and senior citizens, rich and poor, adventurers and homebodies, people to whom death has come in myriad ways, including by their own hand. He’s led services crowded with mourners. And another that had just two: an elderly man grieving his wife of 60-something years and a young neighbor who didn’t want him to go through it alone.
Memorial services are mostly for those left behind, said McCullar, whose voice retains a whisper of his Alabama upbringing. There are treasures the dead leave that go well beyond what’s in a will. He calls them “life songs” — good traits.
“My goal is to equip everyone in attendance to pick up one of those traits and employ it in their life and share it with other people. That way, they change. Somebody else might change. The living legacy — the memorial — goes on,” he said. “I have done funerals for people who weren’t really great people, but there was something good about even the not-great people that we want to celebrate.”
For Locke, the good traits were immediately clear, he said. At the start of the recent funeral for him, McCullar told mourners he wished he had known the man. “Jonathan is doing just fine right now. … The nanosecond he passed from this life he was in the presence of God.”
Days later, the deceased’s grieving mother, Donna Locke, said, “Everybody told me the service was beautiful. I don’t remember a lot about that day.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
Lifting up a life
McCullar said he works so hard on his tributes largely because of what happened at his own mother’s funeral 12 years ago.
He considered her a very difficult person and wasn’t particularly motivated to perform her eulogy. Instead, one of his sisters hired another pastor willing to do funerals for strangers.
During the service, the officiant never mentioned his mother’s name, “which is a sin in this business,” McCullar said. The minister also mistakenly told two stories that were really about somebody else and preached fire and brimstone.
“Funerals,” McCullar said, “aren’t for preaching. Funerals are for lifting up the life of the person who is gone and solidifying the family that is left behind.”
Later, McCullar told his wife he’d never handle a funeral that way. “I will never mail something in.”
Still, he is also trained to not let his emotions bubble up during a service. Recently, that discipline was tested when he conducted a graveside service for an infant in a tiny coffin. He tried to hold himself together in front of the baby’s inconsolable mother. “That one,” McCullar said, “I will never get past.”
He’s had to grow into dealing with death and grief.
When he was 22 and working for a corrections facility in Alabama, the local police chief asked him to do a death notification. A woman, her two kids and her mother had died in a Christmas Eve house fire. Her husband, unaware of what had happened, would return on Christmas morning to the house. The chief wanted McCullar to be there to share the news.
“I said ‘Chief, why me?’ He said, ‘We just think you have the chops to do this, and you go to church.’”
McCullar remembers little other than the father’s crying and the lingering smell of the burned house. “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.”
McCullar was left with his own emotions to sort out. “l had anger toward God over it.” Now, he said, “I have a better grasp of it: We live in a broken world.”
His training has left him better able to address grief. But he knows sometimes no words can provide comfort.
As part of his work with the Johns Creek Police, McCullar joined emergency workers at the home of a mother being notified that her teenage son had just killed himself. Initially, the mother fainted. After she regained consciousness, she dropped to her kitchen floor, saying “‘I’m going to die here tonight. I’m never going to get up from this floor.’”
McCullar was unsure what to do. He went with instinct. “I just got down on the floor. Laid beside her and held her hand. Forty-five minutes. Not a word was spoken.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
’I show up’
His time eulogizing strangers also has led him to think about his own end. He’s started to contemplate what to include in his eventual send-off — a topic his wife of 46 years has no interest in exploring.
He’s seen too many people in the last year and a half who are adrift trying to make funeral preparations after losing a loved one. He doesn’t want his own family put through the extra stress. And he wants to get the service right.
So, just in the last few weeks, the “go-to memorial service guy” began planning his own funeral. It’s been slow going.
The rough draft of his eulogy begins this way: “I’ve been told I’m a hero, but I’m not. Heroes run into burning buildings to save lives; heroes serve and protect both here and abroad; heroes find cures for pernicious disease and save countless lives. Me? I show up.”
McCullar also plans to close with the same quote he has offered for dozens of strangers.
He wrote, “If there is a void left by my passing, I will leave you with this from my all-time favorite philosopher and theologian, Winnie the Pooh: ‘If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever.’”
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