Thoughts

I see a group of high school boys going to the funeral of one of their team mates. My heart aches for them. This boy was not doing anything wrong. He was just in a truck that lost control and skidded on the ice on the way to a basketball game. Not that it would matter even if it was different.

It is so hard to bury a child. It's hard to bury anyone. Those first feelings that now this person will never experience all the beautiful life experiences he might have rise up soon to be replaced with something even more difficult, how much he is missed. I think that is what makes funerals hard.

Death is almost inconceivable. How can someone who was such a part of my life not be here anymore? I see him and yet he isn't here. That thought came to me at my own mother's funeral. I had to explain to my young children where Grammy went. It was hard. I did it, but I cried. I was heartbroken, so heartbroken I didn't even try to figure out why, but my son, who was eight years old at the time said it perfectly. "We're sad because we miss her."

It doesn't matter how many times I look at death's face and I have done it more often lately, I still find it a difficult concept. Once again I fall back on the words of one of my sons, who when he looked at his grandmother's face at the funeral home said, "You're right, she's not there."

The idea that some spark, something we call a soul, something I can't touch, or measure, see, or hang onto, lights up this shell that has a name so dear to me is hard to understand, but maybe not for the very young who have so little control over their world anyway. And maybe more so for teenagers. They are just discovering how much control they do have over their lives and then this happens.

Life is such a long winding pathway and when it loops back like it did today it brings up so many feelings. Feelings. Another one of those elusive concepts to ponder on.