Will Bewley ’26 on Living Before the Deadline

Will Bewley is the kind of person you notice right away. “Will and I connected immediately,” faculty member Erica Dunne recalls as she introduces Will for his recent TA talk—and it’s easy to see why. In everything he does, Will brings an energy that draws people in. “His enthusiasm is infectious,” she explains, and in their work together, “Will rose to every occasion.” Whether he’s talking about obscure films—“he’s seen every movie you’ve never heard of”—or engaging with the people around him, Will has a way of making others lean in. And perhaps, as the speaker suggests, Will’s enthusiasm might inspire you too.

But Will’s story goes far beyond personality. It’s rooted in an experience that is, statistically speaking, incredibly rare. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, thousands of teenagers work summer jobs each year—but only a small fraction work in hazardous fields. Just a few hundred nationwide are employed in industries like meat, poultry, and fish processing. Even fewer—around 2,000 teens—work in funeral services. That makes Will, in his own words, “statistically negligible.”

He got the job the way many teenagers do, through a connection. His mom knew someone, and soon enough he found himself asking, “What would my day-to-day look like?” The answer was anything but ordinary. “There are three of us who run it,” he explains. “Billy, Jay, and me.”

One of his most vivid memories captures just how unusual the job could be. He recalls a day when they were transporting a body and had to make an unexpected stop at a hardware store—“leaving me, a 14-year-old, alone in the car with a body.” In that quiet, surreal moment, he reflects, “I was alone in the car with a person whose life was over.” It’s not an experience most teenagers—or most people—ever have.

Working in a funeral home exposed Will to a side of life that many try to avoid. He saw how grief lingers in unexpected ways. Sometimes, families who have lost a loved one can’t bear to keep certain belongings, asking the funeral home to hold onto them instead. In one instance, after a room had been cleared out, it struck him that these ordinary objects once “belonged and meant something to someone.” What remained wasn’t just stuff, it was a piece of their life.

From these experiences, Will began to shape a philosophy. “The only thing that will outlast you is the impression you leave on people,” he says. It’s a simple idea, but one that carries weight when you’ve seen how fleeting everything else can be. He’s learned that when someone is gone, “you find yourself missing things so ordinary that you never thought to appreciate until they’re not there anymore.”

That realization has changed how he wants to live. “I want to have lived in a way that makes people want to be there,” he says, reflecting on the many funerals he’s witnessed — some large, some small, but all deeply human. At the core of it, his goal is straightforward: “I want to matter to the people I love. I want to be a good person. Not living a perfect life, but a present one.”

There’s a sense of urgency in his perspective, too. “A deadline makes you take something seriously,” he explains. “That’s how I view life—except I don’t know what the deadline is.” And if that’s the case, why wait? Why not show up fully now, instead of later?

Because, as Will has learned, the moments that matter most are often the ones that never make it onto a resume. Cooking with people you love. Singing karaoke in the car. Laughing at nothing in particular. These are the moments that stay.

“Someday, everyone will end up in a funeral home,” he says. “Mortality is the one thing that connects every single person.” Strip everything else away—the titles, the grades, the achievements—and what remains is the question: Who are you?

And whether you realize it or not, you’re already writing the answer.