Just Today

You know, just today, I was thinking about my friend's funeral I went to in March. Now July, that seems like a long time ago, but it really wasn't. Not when you've lost somebody like that.

Now in the warmth of the summer, it's hard not to remember how I stood in the blistering cold for almost four hours for the wake, to bid my friend another goodbye. I told myself I wouldn't let this goodbye be any different then the other goodbyes, because afterall, that's not how he would have wanted it to be.

But it felt like the last goodbye. And I cried and cried even until I walked out of the funeral home and down the street to my car with my friends and even at midnight when I got home and got some warm food into me, it felt like a lifetime had passed and everything seemed so hopeless.

But the funeral was amazingly warm for March and we sat in the church and we tried to remember all the good that our friend had brought us because he was truly a kind soul that was going to live in us forever, according to the priest.

And while I might be an atheist, it was probably the nicest funeral I've ever attended. Only at the end, did I get that full tug at my heart as we placed flowers onto the coffin and said what was really, the final goodbye.

But I look back at the experience and see how much that taught me. Dealing with loss is easy when you've got people to help you get through. Friends. The people who knew him too.

And so the end of a life is really just a beginning of a new one, a new day, and a new era.