(no subject)
I attended a funeral today for the first time since I was about thirteen. My parents never let me see a corpse before and this one, on top of everything, was the body of a classmate. He was 24 and he graduated a year ahead of me. An avid journalist, passionate for the truth and fairness, kind and thoughtful, a lover of life, a pusher of limits, a seeker of God and a good and caring friend, respecting everyone. I hadn't seen him in three years. He was someone I was acquainted with but not close to, yet I cried when I heard he passed away Friday. The trip to the place was two hours to the friend's house where we stayed overnight and then an hour to the place of the funeral. He was a messianic menonite with eleven younger brothers and sisters, the youngest still an infant, a son. He was Benjamin.
Mourning is exhausting. I thought getting home at three would leave me time to get things done I couldn't this morning, because life must go on even when we wish it would pause awhile so we can cope, but I'm exhausted, tired, mentally and emotionally.
I had never seen a corpse before. I once saw a dead person, but he'd been hit by a car not long before my family passed the scene of the accident and that is not the same as seeing someone dead since Friday. He looked like himself. He had been dressed in his good shirt, his blue jeans and his flipflops, as he would have wanted, but he was not himself. Thanks to the marvels of funeral homes and undertakers, there was nothing unlike himself that he looked like. There was just something that wasn't there. I'm not even sure how to describe it, like some gray transparent cloud hung about him just faded enough to be hard to really see, but there, noticeable, a veil. I stood and made myself look at the body. I had remembered his face after a long time in thought when I'd heard. I hadn't seen him in so long and I had wanted to remember him alive before I saw him dead. There must have been a hundred fifty people or more at the funeral; they had to move the service from the family's house to the outside yard. His mother only appeared just before the service started. His siblings were sober, except for one incorrigible little sister, who was five and though sad at times seemed to quickly forget in light of the life all around her. I saw family and friends kiss a corpse. There is love in that. They weren't repulsed. This was someone they knew, who was gone but still there. That part of him that they'd seen and held and hugged was still there.
Seeing all those people, following them to the cemetery, watching the dirt get thrown in the grave while people went into the meeting house for service and hearing all the stories shared, seeing his mother crying in black, crying fresh over and over again at some story that rang true about how well she knew her son, that got to me. It's strange. We weren't close. I did not break down weeping as some people did and had a right to do. Yet I was moved to tears by all the people so hurt and so crying and the faces I knew there, still living, still living in spite of his dying, but so hurt by his death. He'd been on a camping trip with family and friends. I saw the young man who had tried to save him from drowning, heard an older man tell him he'd done all he could and he'd find peace with it, as they all would eventually.
His mother, that hurt me most, holding onto her infant and her toddler in their turns and crying or just barely not crying. All in black, from her kerchief to her stockings, her eldest daughter all clothed in black too. His siblings all so young. I've never been in a situation where there was no one to disallow me to attend a funeral. This is only one face of death, the untimely death that creeps up and claws at the back before it can be foreseen. I've never seen someone actually die and that scares me, because someday, who knows, I might have to, and it might be someone I know. And eventually I will see someone I know die, many people, because that's the way of all the earth. It's awful though, just awful. I trust God's love, I do, but I am grieved for those left behind who have to press on despite the void left in the passing of a loved one.
It must be like being torn in two and stabbed in the heart, to be a mother losing her firstborn son, especially so suddenly and so young with all his life ahead of him and all his dreams cherished as her own. To have his body in a pinewood cofffin in your own house and your family all around you, children to feed, to explain to, to comfort, when you're own heart's torn up inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Asleep or dead?
I am not afraid to keep on living.
I am not afraid to walk this world alone ...
Nothing you can say can stop me going home."
-MCR-
Mourning is exhausting. I thought getting home at three would leave me time to get things done I couldn't this morning, because life must go on even when we wish it would pause awhile so we can cope, but I'm exhausted, tired, mentally and emotionally.
I had never seen a corpse before. I once saw a dead person, but he'd been hit by a car not long before my family passed the scene of the accident and that is not the same as seeing someone dead since Friday. He looked like himself. He had been dressed in his good shirt, his blue jeans and his flipflops, as he would have wanted, but he was not himself. Thanks to the marvels of funeral homes and undertakers, there was nothing unlike himself that he looked like. There was just something that wasn't there. I'm not even sure how to describe it, like some gray transparent cloud hung about him just faded enough to be hard to really see, but there, noticeable, a veil. I stood and made myself look at the body. I had remembered his face after a long time in thought when I'd heard. I hadn't seen him in so long and I had wanted to remember him alive before I saw him dead. There must have been a hundred fifty people or more at the funeral; they had to move the service from the family's house to the outside yard. His mother only appeared just before the service started. His siblings were sober, except for one incorrigible little sister, who was five and though sad at times seemed to quickly forget in light of the life all around her. I saw family and friends kiss a corpse. There is love in that. They weren't repulsed. This was someone they knew, who was gone but still there. That part of him that they'd seen and held and hugged was still there.
Seeing all those people, following them to the cemetery, watching the dirt get thrown in the grave while people went into the meeting house for service and hearing all the stories shared, seeing his mother crying in black, crying fresh over and over again at some story that rang true about how well she knew her son, that got to me. It's strange. We weren't close. I did not break down weeping as some people did and had a right to do. Yet I was moved to tears by all the people so hurt and so crying and the faces I knew there, still living, still living in spite of his dying, but so hurt by his death. He'd been on a camping trip with family and friends. I saw the young man who had tried to save him from drowning, heard an older man tell him he'd done all he could and he'd find peace with it, as they all would eventually.
His mother, that hurt me most, holding onto her infant and her toddler in their turns and crying or just barely not crying. All in black, from her kerchief to her stockings, her eldest daughter all clothed in black too. His siblings all so young. I've never been in a situation where there was no one to disallow me to attend a funeral. This is only one face of death, the untimely death that creeps up and claws at the back before it can be foreseen. I've never seen someone actually die and that scares me, because someday, who knows, I might have to, and it might be someone I know. And eventually I will see someone I know die, many people, because that's the way of all the earth. It's awful though, just awful. I trust God's love, I do, but I am grieved for those left behind who have to press on despite the void left in the passing of a loved one.
It must be like being torn in two and stabbed in the heart, to be a mother losing her firstborn son, especially so suddenly and so young with all his life ahead of him and all his dreams cherished as her own. To have his body in a pinewood cofffin in your own house and your family all around you, children to feed, to explain to, to comfort, when you're own heart's torn up inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Asleep or dead?
I am not afraid to keep on living.
I am not afraid to walk this world alone ...
Nothing you can say can stop me going home."
-MCR-