It’s another day for a funeral.
Today is overcast and wet. Not quite raining, more, just wet. It is not a life-changing funeral for us. I send a prayer to the heavens for that.
Nevertheless, it is an important funeral for us. My husband’s best friend is being laid to rest today.
It is a tradition that I agree with. I believe it helps us with our many and varied feelings about life. We need the time to work through our relationship with the person who has passed away.
For some, it is an interruption in a conversation. The interruption could have been a furious argument, or it may have been a soul-searching declaration of love. For any interruption there will remain a sense of incompletion.
For others it is an end to a time in a life. For the child of, for the spouse of, it is an end to a time. It could be the end of a certain structure, a way of a family’s life. A central figure in the life of the family is gone and the family doesn’t know how to proceed.
For others it can feel like the end to life itself. Nothing will ever be the same again. Life is unalterably changed, different than it has ever been. And these are those who suffer the most with this grief, with this moment in time. These are those who have lost it all. Most can recover, some will not, instead will follow to the space of darkness, never to return.
We make the journey to meet all those affected in each different way. For us it is a struggle with mortality. Must death always win? Sometimes death comes with a plan, but other times it is all so sudden and cravenly wrong. Death can steal life in the brightness of day with no warning whatsoever.
We come to make our peace with the dead man. For this time, we are the lucky ones. Our life will not change with the passing of this man. He will be missed, but the missing will make no change here.
This funeral demands action
What we must do in this moment is to grapple with mortality. We must see our own death and our own plans for the day that we pass and thus change our family completely.
The finality of death looms over us. It changes our experience of life. If we acknowledge death, we must admit that our denial and anger separate us from each other. Our separation becomes a decision that must be reviewed. Can we really live this life in full resentment of each other? Can we really abide without ever having a conversation with our loved one about our relationship or our pain?
We have to review our relationship decisions. We must acknowledge the gravity of our treatment of each other. It is a thoughtful time. It is a time of grief.