Someone recently asked me if I remember where I was when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

To tell the truth, I don’t.

I know how it has affected me since:  It’s given me great hope, great reason to be optimistic, and the ability to accept the possibility of change.

That speech happened during what I call “my first life,” when I was a funeral director.  Our whole focus was on a family that had lost a loved one.  A ship could have been torpedoed, an entire country could have been blown up, and I’d have been oblivious to it as I ran around looking for church candles and hearses and limousines.

I’ll never forget when I was a kid, and we lived above a little funeral home.  My mother had a miscarriage, and her brothers, who were all doctors, rushed over to our apartment and were tending to her.

In the middle of everything, the phone rang, and my father was on the phone for half an hour.

One of the brothers said, “How could leave her side to talk on the phone for half an hour?”

My father’s answer was very direct:  “Those people have just lost their father; a woman has lost her husband.  They didn’t give a damn about me and my problems.”

I always remember that.

As the instrument of studying the ritualization of the proper way of to bury someone, the funeral director is the beaming light that enters the darkness.  That’s the world I existed in.

So when Dr. King gave his great speech, I have to admit that it wasn’t until I was watching the replay, probably in a bar, that I paid attention to it.

Since that time, it has become one of the real guiding points of my life.

Matt