Can we talk?

Funeral Day

         For the second time in six months, I have seen one set of cousins and all their relatives from the other side of their family at a funeral home. Today it was my dad's brother-in-law we laid to rest, the last of his generation in his immediate family. My uncle's sister was there. She's got to be about 90. She has cancer; she didn't last summer. She's lost her hair and is wearing a wig.

         The cemetery was muddy and slushy, deep snow melting in the sun. It was the warmest day we have had in over a week. But it will freeze again tonight and be cold again tomorrow. Several men helped my dad who walks with a cane and several other old people. The service was in the funeral home which is near the cemetery. It's a small town on the James River. It's very quaint but frequently floods. The meal afterward was in the church which is really out in the sticks. We had already driven half an hour in the country to get that far. We went home from the cemetery.

         The preacher is an independent (no strict creed) and likes to perform. He shouts a lot and plays his guitar as he is led. He changes the tune even when he asks the crowd to join in. I guess before the radio, people like him were in great demand. He sounded awful, yet there was something kind of ancient and down to earth about him and his screeching. He thinks he's good. And a lot of people like him. But he celebrated my uncle's life, and that's what counts. He made it joyful, not sad.

         Funerals are not for the dead. They are for the living. They are meant to help the mourners keep going. They are meant for all of us who are contemplating our own mortality, to remind us that all life counts, that no matter how it may feel from time to time, we have not lived in vain. We are all in this struggle together and could treasure every moment of it.