Things I Think About at Night

I've known five people to die and two people to suffer major injuries, all unrelated incidents, in the past two weeks. It's times like that which make you sit back and reflect on life, and what it all means. I asked my sister, who professes some version of faith, to ask God to stop. No, to demand him to stop. She just smiled and said we needed to have a long talk.

I'm pretty good about avoiding funerals. I'll go to a visitation, but a funeral really tears me up. The funeral I attended this past weekend was no exception. The deceased was the daughter of my father-in-law's best friend. That effectively made her “some sort of cousin” for my husband, and he knew her far better than I. She and I were nearly the same age, and we shared a first name; the similarities ended there. As I sat in the church this weekend, listening to the tears and what I endearingly term as “country-gospel-rites-for-the-dead,” I cried as well. Not necessarily for her – I don't want to sound cruel, but I don't cry for the dead, I cry for those who are in pain and grieving. And I was thinking, the entire time, “I don't know her but I grieve for her parents' loss.” The empathy thing is sometimes much too hard to bear.

I'm not sure if it matters that I haven't walked into a church since 1996 and that was for a wedding. The service for the funeral was nice. Thankfully not offensively religious, but it did hold some surprises. I've never been to “that kind of funeral” before – every other one I've been to was kind of a dress-up affair. I really felt the sense of community there, in this small church, filled with screaming babies and country music.

When we drove to the cemetery, I stood aside. I didn't know the family well, and it seemed... rude, somehow, to intrude. I wandered about, looking at the varied and interesting tombstones. One of them said “get over it,” which made me giggle into the cold wind. The cemetery was filled with over 100 years of history, bodies mouldering away, marked only by a stone. I watched the father and mother say goodbye to their daughter, and I wondered what it must feel like, to bury one so soon. The mother held her head up – even at this sad time she had dignity to uphold – and I wondered how long it would take for her to break down when she finally got home that night.

How do people do it? How do you hold up to that kind of pressure? Life is so ephemeral.