After the Funeral Home

I can't think of a clever title for this one.  I have no cleverness at all to share.  I went to the funeral home tonight to see the fragile remains of someone two years younger than I, somebody I went to church with, somebody I watched grow up more or less.  Forgive me if I'm not glib.  Seeing someone you've known most of your life in a box so still and pale has the tendency to steal away witticisms.

She and I were never close, but her family and my family are tied together by several things.  She was someone I knew distantly, would hear reports on occasionally over the top of a pew.  She went her way and I went mine after graduation; she moved away, married, had children, divorced.  We would see each other occasionally in church at the big holidays that bring everybody home.

Death always seems like something that only happens to another generation.  Even though I have seen it strike down so many from every possible age group, some trick of our minds keeps telling us, "Not me.  Not us.  Not now."  The reality of it is, though, that there is no "right age," no chosen generation.  That safety we wrap ourselves in to go through the days and nights is just an illusion, a necessary one perhaps, but deceptive nonetheless.

It takes so little to end our lives, no time at all and so very little to go wrong.  In her case, it was a car wreck that reached out and crushed her.  She'd fought so many things so hard for so long, but a wreck of the type she had is not a battle that anybody can win.

Her family told us today that because she was an organ donor, already over 37 people have been  helped because of parts of her that the doctors were able to harvest.  More may receive other organs.  Her liver saved a man on the transplant list.  Her heart went to someone else.  She was someone who always took care of others; even in her death, she continues to do so.

Seeing her in that box today was terrible, knowing that there are four kids who won't get to have their mother anymore, knowing that her family (of whom I think the world) won't have her there with them.  While there is a type of relief in knowing that she is out of so many of the things that caused her pain in this world and believing that she is now at rest in a better place, my worry is for those who are left behind.  Once the adrenaline and shock end, once the final parts of the ceremonies of death are concluded and the last of the covered dishes have been delivered, I worry that the grief will become unbearable.  I hope that they can cling to what they knew of her in life, what they know of the good that came from her loss, and what they know of her in eternity and find comfort.