Growing up in a funeral home
Beginning with the end in mind.
The phone would ring upstairs at all hours of the night, which meant dad was about to roll out of bed to go pick up a body. I just recently learned of the Latin saying memento mori, or “remember you will die,” but while morbid to others, this was a daily reminder for me as a child. “Memento mori” may as well have been the name of our house phone’s ringtone.
Death was not “scary” to me. Death was always around so I learned to live with it. I didn’t have much of a choice after all, we lived in a funeral home. To me, life felt joyous. I look back on my childhood fondly. I remember having all I ever needed and just about everything I ever wanted. Sure, my brother and I occasionally would lose the toy football in a casket and, sure, we would scream running up two flights of stairs after getting ice cream from the basement freezer in the casket showroom, but we also got access to a massive parking lot to ride our bikes. There were trade offs.
Our life was split between two worlds: our home where we lived upstairs and the funeral home downstairs. These two worlds were inextricably intertwined. The only way to get to our home upstairs was through the funeral home. These two levels of our home, life and death, were one.
Soaking in the world around me as a child, I grew up watching my dad console families on a daily basis and make people feel as comfortable as possible at one of the most difficult times in their lives. Every day for him could be someone else’s hardest day. Little did I know, I was watching him display a superpower.
I had lived in a funeral home until I was ten years old. A few years later, heavily influenced by this unconventional childhood, my avid journaling habit began. Every single night throughout middle and high school, without fail, I would recap my day, capture a quote, and write down something I was grateful for. Thinking back on it now, it makes complete sense that I wanted to remember every detail of every day. I remember telling myself from a very young age that I wanted to have the most people at my funeral. This is what I must have recognized as some sign of success.
This unique upbringing laid the foundation for InStrive. Witnessing the finality of life made me want to discover myself and understand who I am in this world. I strive to be an active participant in my life, consciously crafting the life I desire, to ensure I fully embrace the one life I was given. There is already enough that is scary, negative, and difficult in life so I strive to reframe and control my mind. I told myself from a young age that I would do all I could to be positive and optimistic. I strive to remain a student of life and the world around me, continuing to soak up everything I can and continually grow. To this day, I am known as the guy that checks in on everyone. So much so that my roommates in Brooklyn deemed me Coach and Mama Rodney, named after our old apt on Rodney street. At it’s core, InStrive is about human connection and living the life you want.
Combining my peculiar childhood goal of striving to have the most people at my funeral with the lessons learned from my funeral director father led me to grow up firmly believing that I must be kind to everyone. Everyone dies, which means anyone could be someone we serve. Service, empathy, and compassion were engrained into my very being as I set out to live my life with gratitude, intention, and interact with everyone I met as if they would one day visit my house… upstairs or downstairs, one in the same.
To learn more, visit InStive.com and connect with me.