MILWAUKEE — Artificial red roses lay on top of a white coffin. A pastor stands at the front of the room. The pews are filled and almost everyone is still in high school. Some eyes stare straight ahead. Others with a bent head like in prayer, keep their gaze on the ground the weight of the moment too much too bare.
There's a procession by the open casket. But instead of the sunken face of a friend or loved one gone too soon, each person who passes is met by their own reflection. A mirror, or maybe a looking glass, into a future they all hope to avoid.
Just like the roses on the coffin, this funeral for a 17-year-old isn't real. But it does reflect a reality that's become far too familiar for far too many people.
"To hear a mother cry is the worst feeling in the world," Troy Robertson shared.
Robertson has been the funeral director at Northwest Funeral Chapel for over two decades. It's the preventable deaths of kids, from gun violence or reckless driving, that stay burned in his memory.
"It's gotten worse. And it seems like we're desensitized by it. It seems like it's just expected. I remember one summer we just had death after death of young people, and we're starting to see some of the same kids come through the door because they knew people," Robertson said.
He described the look on the faces of those young people coming to bury a friend or family member as questioning.
"They have a look on their face. Am I next? Will I be next? Will I be here again soon? Or will that be me in the casket? It's horrible," Robertson described.
That feeling was reflected on the faces of the dozens of high school juniors as they passed by the mirror in the casket. The students there are high school juniors part of Marquette University's College Bound Scholars Program.
"I've been to a lot of funerals so I kind of expected what the walk-through was going to be like," 17-year-old Aaron Smith said.
But what was unexpected was seeing himself reflected in the mirror.
"It hurt 'cause like I picture some of my family in there that I've seen and that I'm used to. I wanted to cry," Smith shared of the vulnerable moment.
Robertson said the point of the mock funeral is to send a message to the kids before they're given the chance to make an irreversible decision.
Robertson's ultimate message to young people in Milwaukee is: "We don't want your business. We don't want to bury a young person."
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