Me: “I just called to tell you how much I love you.”

Justine: “What’s wrong?”

Me: “Nothing‘s wrong.”

Justine: “Yes there is. You never call me in the middle of the week. And you sound like you’re about to cry.”

Justine’s my big sister. She was right. I was driving across the San Francisco Bay, on my way home from a new client, a beautiful cemetery that holds extraordinary funeral services. I was helping them develop training for new employees.

Up to this point, I had spent very little time in cemeteries or at funerals. It was a strange new environment to be working in. I expected it to be sad, gloomy, depressing. I expected the people to be dour and unsmiling. Altogether very grim.

It was the opposite. They were the warmest, friendliest, nicest, most caring clients I’ve ever had in my life. Their smiles and hearts were kind and sincere. I fell in love with them immediately and love them still with all my heart.

While I was there, I saw many families, many friends, overwhelmed by the raw, gut-wrenching grief that comes from the uncaring, unrelenting finality of never seeing someone they loved again. I was deeply moved by the uncontrollable outpouring of hopeless, heartbreaking love that I saw before me.

Over and over again I saw something that really struck me. We tell each other all the time, “I love you.” “You are important to me.” “I really appreciate you.” “I’m grateful to have you in my life.”

These are weak and tame expressions compared to the full force of love for a person that we feel at funerals.  It was only at these funerals that I saw people fully express how much a person mattered to them, how irreplacable they were. Somehow it doesn’t quite hit any of us until the complete, utter, never-ending loss of it.

And that made me turn inward. I’ve always had a very small family: mother, father, sister and aunt. My parents had me late in life. They and my aunt passed away, profound losses in my life. Leaving my sister and me.

Throughout our lives, my sister and I have fought like cats and dogs, yelled, argued and scraped, something it seemed we would never grow out of. We’ve also laughed and shared secrets, had endless conversations, cried on each other’s shoulders, helped each other through crisis. But I had taken her for granted my whole life.

And that’s what I saw at these funerals. What happens when you lose someone you’ve had the luxury to take for granted.

And suddenly it hit me, how much I loved her, how important she is to my life, how much I needed her, and all the beautiful things about her that I absolutely adore, admire and can’t live without.

Justine was a very successful trial attorney who is now a gifted writer on the verge of having her first brilliant novel published.

Driving over the Bay Bridge, I was overwhelmed by a tsunami of happiness that she was alive. I kept thinking, “She’s alive! She’s still here! I have her!”

The gratitude I felt overpowered me. After I crossed the bridge, I pulled over by the side of the road, filled with emotion, and called her.

It happened a good number of times. I would call Justine driving home, overwhelmed with love for her, always in the middle of the week. It got to the point where she would laugh and ask, “Did you just leave the cemetery?” I would say, “Yes” and we would both laugh. But the love was true.

That was a number of years ago. But every single day since then, I wake up grateful that I still have Justine. A gratitude that fills my heart and is too deep and too powerful for words.

I told Leonora, who is responsible for cemetery arrangements, how much the experience of working with all of them has changed me. She smiled with complete understanding. She knows well the magnitude of gratitude for the living that working in a cemetery and arranging funerals awakens. Funerals bring out depths of emotion people don’t experience in their ordinary lives. Leonora gets to experience them every day.

Leonora asked me, “Ingrid, do you have any special dresses, jewelry, or shoes hiding in the back of the drawer or in the back of your closet for a special occasion?” I laughed and said, I never thought about it, but yes I do!”

Leonora said, “Take them out and wear them. Every day is a special occasion. All the time I see people who have saved their ‘best things’ for a special occasion, and they die never getting to have lived the full joy of them.”

Those words meant more to me than just what’s in my closet. Her words spoke to me of the emotions that I have that are unexpressed, and the love that I have that is not fully experienced or expressed. But a funeral would bring my life to a complete halt and I would be overcome.

Since then, I let myself be overcome today and every day by the love I have for others.  I don’t want to wait and have that moment when it’s too late.

I love my sister with a fierce love. I am profoundly grateful she is alive and I will enjoy Thanksgiving with her. We each have many people in our lives who love us, our lives are filled with wonderful people who love us. But there’s nothing like the love of family. And there most certainly is no one like my Justine.

I wish you a very joyous and love-filled Thanksgiving. And I give you Leonora’s wise advice:  If there’s anything in your closet you’ve been saving for a special occasion, including your closest emotions, today is that special occasion. Take them out and start wearing them, experience the living joy of them today.