Saying Goodbye

There was a death in our family last week. My Aunt Jocelyn was so well loved, there were no empty seats at her funeral. People who loved her lined the back wall of the church and laughed and cried together, in her memory. 

Death is so strange sometimes. Every death I've experienced before this made sense. My Grandparents, or Great Aunts and even Great Grandparents. They were ill and tired. They didn't have young children or young spouses. To watch a family mourn the sudden and premature loss of someone so close to them is devastating and sobering. What would it mean to us to lose our husbands and parents? You truly don't understand or realize the weight of it all until it's happening to you. 

There really is no greater design than that of the family unit. There is nothing more functional. Oddly enough I think that maybe there is nothing more painful. Love is the most rewarding and most challenging of all of the emotions that we feel as humans. This week and the weeks prior my family braided themselves together around my Uncle, in love, support, fear... It's hard to watch and it's even harder to understand. But the love satisfies for a moment. The sympathy and the care that was put into the funeral arrangements, the food, the music the flowers... Somehow all seem too insignificant but they are the tools we've taught ourselves to use as we undertake the journey of healing. 

Our relationships somehow sustain us when the lights go out of our lives. Somehow the ones who love us multiply around us and hold us up like soldiers on a battlefield. The loss is staggering and unbelievable but inevitably part of the human experience. Our lives are made richer by the fact that they are finite. We are here together for a moment that stretches across a hundred years, if we are lucky. We give love and take love, we fight and disagree, bring children into the world and watch them grow, then in the last small moments we take stock of what seemed to be a century but really was only a moment. 

And though it somehow makes sense in our hearts to hide behind the grief, sorrow and guilt it makes even more sense to make use of the memories our loved ones give us and, mercifully, leave us with when they go. Laughter and lightheartedness in this heavy heavy world is the greatest legacy. If you are lucky enough to have been left with memories of joy and happiness bring them into the light of your mind and let the sadness fall to the back. The time we have together, no matter how short, is a gift.

With love to my Uncle and all of the people affected by this loss,

Miranda