Bill Hulseman is the author of the new book Six to Carry the Casket and One to Say the Mass: Reflections in Life, Identity, and Moving Forward. He is a ritual designer and wedding officiant, and he lives in Seattle.
Q:
Over how long a period did you write the essays in your new book?
A:
Most of the essays in this book emerged from reflections I shared in my weekly
newsletter between 2020 and 2023, and I spent most of 2023 expanding,
combining, and revising them. I submitted everything to my editor, Danielle
Harvey, in early 2024, and we collaborated on reordering and refining the
manuscript into its final form.
But
I never intended to publish a book. After a career in education, I burned
out–the deaths of my parents and one of my sisters during the first two years
of the hardest job I’d ever had broke me.
In
2019, I left life in schools and gave myself a year to do nothing–well, not
quite “nothing.” I moved to Seattle, got married, did a lot of yoga, took our
dog on long walks, and focused on getting healthy.
At
the end of the year, I realized that I didn’t want to return to working in
schools, started a consulting practice, and took a “throw spaghetti against the
wall” approach to figure out what to do next.
I
took on a few projects with schools and facilitating gigs, and I started
writing reflections for my weekly newsletter both to process the grief and
change I’d experienced and to discern my next professional steps.
I
really wanted to understand how I’d landed in that place–a place of burnout, a
place where I couldn’t imagine returning to the career I’d loved and pursued
for two decades–and where I would go next.
By
this time, we were halfway through 2020–deep in quarantine, deep in the social
reckoning that followed the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud
Arbery, deeply politically divided–and I wanted to know not just how I
personally landed there but how we all landed there. I needed to make sense of
the world.
Q:
How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A:
The title evokes a lot for me about my mom–her wit, her very Irish-Catholic
sensibilities–but it also evokes one of my earliest identities. It’s taken from
an essay about my mother that grew out of a toast that I gave for her 80th
birthday. She had a way with words, so instead of recounting particular moments
or telling stories about her, I shared some of her “greatest hits,” the phrases
that were famous in my family.
I
often joke that my mother prepared us for her death from the moment we were
born. If any of us gave her a gift, a permanent marker would appear, and she’d
have the giver’s initials or name on the bottom before she finished saying
“thank you.” If asked why, she’d say, “Well, I don’t want these kids fighting
over stuff when I’m gone.”
She’d
also frequently note to whoever was listening, “Oh, I want this at my funeral”
when she heard a song or text that she liked.
My
siblings and I understood this as a facet of Irish-Catholic humor, but people
hearing remarks like that for the first time would wince with concern.
I’ve
made similar jokes to my husband–he does not laugh. Instead, he just furrows
his brow and shakes his head. When my sister made a similar joke at
Thanksgiving, my husband declared “You Catholics are far too comfortable
talking about death.”
I’m
the youngest of 10 siblings, and, though we grew up around several other large
families, 10 was still a surprise to people, and Mom was skilled in managing
their shock. When folx gagged at 10 children, she’d reply, “Well, they’re from
my husband’s first marriage.”
Three
girls in the family wasn’t as notable as seven boys, so when people commented
on the brood of brothers, she’d say, “Well, God gave me seven sons for a
reason. Six to carry the casket and one to say the mass.”
I
was the one who was supposed to say the mass. By the time I came around, it was
clear that the first six boys weren’t heading to seminary, so when I declared a
religious studies major in college, when I enrolled in Divinity school, and
when I took a job as a religion teacher and campus minister, I think she saw a
prophecy coming to fruition.
A
few weeks before she died, she started hospice care, and I flew back to Chicago
to spend a long weekend with her. While we were watching The Sound of Music,
she turned to me and said, “There’s a song I want played at my funeral.” I
understood that, for once, it wasn’t a joke, so I grabbed my laptop, started a
new document, and we planned her funeral together.
Sure,
I never pursued ordination, but I’m the closest she got to having a priest in
the family. And I was able to tap into those skills to minister to her, to walk
with her for the final leg of her journey.
Q:
The author Taylor Strickland said of the book, “When so much of the
contemporary essay narrows focus, finally, with Hulseman, we have an essayist
brave enough to broaden, to broach the manifold issues of the day...” What do
you think of that description?
A:
I don’t know that I’d call myself “brave,” but Taylor lifted up an aspect of
the book that I didn’t appreciate when it was coming together.
In
my work as an educator, I often reflected on the connection between school
missions and the day-to-day tasks that occupied us. My work was always most
compelling and energizing when I could see the school’s mission alive even in
passing interactions with students or colleagues or in mundane tasks.
In
writing these essays, I felt similarly compelled and energized when I could
identify connections between my discrete experiences and wider patterns or
bigger truths.
I
think the process and the resulting book would’ve been pretty boring if I’d
clung narrowly to one thread or another, for example if I started with a focus
on identity and horseblinders to block the rest.
Instead,
I started with my experiences and only later stepped back and saw a throughline
of identity, and that reinforced for me a sense of interdependence, of
interconnectedness between my and others’ identities, between the person I want
to become and the world I want to live in.
Q:
What do you hope readers take away from the collection?
A:
I hope readers are able to see that it’s not all about me. Well, OK, it’s
literally all about me, but I’m not interesting enough to merit a memoir.
Instead,
I hope they see it as an invitation to take their experiences and identities
seriously and compassionately, to make space for deeper reflection both as a
way to process grief and as a way to facilitate transformation, to enable
themselves to become the people they want to be.
I
also hope readers come away with a deeper appreciation of pop culture and start
to look at it for a better understanding of the world. Too often, pop culture
is dismissed, but it’s the arena that most directly and most consistently
shapes us and our relationships, the ways we connect with each other.
Pop
culture is especially significant for queer folx and other marginalized
people–in the book, I try to convey the impact of seeing myself reflected in
pop culture and finding voices and spaces that gave me the language and the
impetus to know myself–and be myself–fully.
Q:
What are you working on now?
A:
I’m working on a book about weddings that is rooted in my primary work as a
ritual designer. It won’t be an event-planning guide–instead, I hope it will
offer an approach to ceremony and celebration design that truly reflects what’s
important to the to-be-weds, not just regurgitates what tradition and Pinterest
tell them what to do.
I
work with couples who don’t have a tradition to draw on, who want to
thoughtfully merge religious or cultural practices, or who want to create
something original or non-patriarchal. The goal is always to create an
experience that reflects the experiences, identities, and values of the people
at the center.
Discerning
whether particular practices truly reflect the people at the center often means
unpacking, deconstructing, adapting, or just rejecting practices we typically
associate with American weddings.
Many
wedding practices originated in the archaic transactional aspect of weddings
(in which a woman was sold by her first owner/her father to her new owner/her
husband) and in European royal court culture. Including
these practices in weddings risks perpetuating the misogynistic,
heteronormative, classist, and racist assumptions that are baked into them.
I
tell the couples that I work with that a wedding is a chance to change the
world–they have a moment in which people who love them are paying very close
attention to their words, their actions, their clothes. They can communicate
what’s important to them and what marriage will be for them, and they can open
guests’ minds to different, more authentic ways to marry.
Q:
Anything else we should know?
A:
I’m grateful–for the opportunity to share what I’ve written and especially for
the rich dialogues that the book has already generated.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
