“All The Ways Our Dead Still Speak” by Caleb Wilde

The provocative title of Caleb Wilde’s observations on the way the dead remain present in our lives sets up the reader for a potentially spooky tale about ghostly apparitions whispering in the dark. But while there are a few sightings of the departed in this book, “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak” is about the author being haunted by his ancestors and their expectations, which rested like a heavy hand on his shoulder.

Caleb Wilde, who is the award-winning author of “Confessions of a Funeral Director,” occupies a unique position on his family tree. As the book opens, he’s a sixth-generation funeral director at the Wilde Funeral Home in Parkesburg, PA, which was founded in 1850. As we follow Wilde on his rounds to collect bodies and arrange viewings and services for grieving families, it soon becomes clear that he’s approaching burnout, yet he feels a tremendous obligation to keep his family legacy alive.

“You could say that death runs in every family, but it seems to have a special run in mine,” he writes. “Following five generations of funeral directors on one side and four on the other, I grew up thinking there wasn’t any other real option. Looking back, I wasn’t sure if I had ever been given the confidence to make my own decisions.”

Wilde has a close relationship with his grandfather, affectionately called Pop-Pop, who embodies the expectations that he feels bearing down from previous generations. It’s just assumed that Wilde will accept the responsibility of running the funeral home, which makes squaring his own desires with family obligations all the more difficult.

Caleb Wilde

As he works to meet the needs of his community, he seeks therapy to try to sort out how much of his life has been shaped by other people’s expectations, and what it is he truly wants. In the beginning, he feels as though the generations that preceded him are imposing a burden that isn’t of his choosing. He’s also troubled by the dark cloud of slavery and racism that was the backdrop for the funeral home in pre- and post-Civil War periods. Although his search for his own identity is more complicated than most, it’s a process that many people can relate to.

Ironically, even though he attended seminary school, he is ambivalent about an afterlife and the existence of ghosts. “I do, though, believe in another kind of ghost,” he wrote, referring to his forebearers. “One that can be much scarier. Much more damaging. And much more haunting. There is the liminality between the living and the dead, an in-between where the bonds of love can still dwell. Liminality is something that makes us uncomfortable. We humans like binaries, such as yes or no. On or off. But some things exist in the in-between. They are yes and no. Dead and alive. Present and absent… . Our loved ones are both gone and still here with you. Their actions, character, and — yes, I think I can use this word — spirit have literally helped form your neural pathways. The way they thought, the things they said, their little idiosyncrasies — these are all dwelling in you.”

Wilde finally acknowledges that his role as funeral director is taking a heavy toll and he decides to leave, despite what everyone in his family, living and dead, thinks. His most difficult task is to tell his grandfather; there has been this unspoken understanding that only Wilde can keep the funeral home going. But surprisingly, Pop-Pop responds with wisdom that would serve other families whose offspring are taking a path that’s different than what they had hoped or expected.

“I can see now that the funeral home has always just been a by-product of our family’s love, creativity and work ethic,” Pop-Pop says. “Those core values are what matter to me now. If you take those core values wherever you go, you’ll be continuing our legacy.”

In the end, Wilde realizes that he can’t keep his ancestors at arm’s length. He must accept and integrate them into his own history, while at the same time, remain true to who he is.

He closes with the visual metaphor of his grandfather’s spirit slipping into him. “He vanishes into me. It’s as if I am now carrying him, just as he carried me… . Of course our dead are still speaking. We carry them in us.“

At the close of “All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak,” Wilde wrote that his future remained uncertain. However, rather than leave the funeral home altogether, he has branched out to serve as a life coach for death care workers.