My youngest three kids are on the east coast this weekend, attending a ceremony honoring their maternal grandparents, both of whom died in recent years and whose ashes are being buried together in a family plot.
For most of us, the bleak finality of death is the one reality we are least prepared to comprehend and accept. When we do have to confront it, the range of emotions can be overwhelming, such that we are left without words.
In my case, I always turn to writing in an effort to cope with these feelings, and in this case, I wrote a short tribute to send back with my children to the memorial service.
I did not know whether the words I wrote would be read aloud at the ceremony or just shared in written form. I also could not know if they would bring comfort to those who in mourning or not.
But they were my attempt to honor their grandparents by evoking our common sense of loss.
People mourn differently. It varies by culture, religion, family and even by individual. But the emotions that transcend those differences include sadness, grief, that awful sense of loss.
After a funeral, what we all share is that we are the ones who are still here. And while it is not possible to know what our deceased loved ones would say to us if they were still able to, it’s a pretty good guess that it might go something like this:
“Make the most of the time you have left. If today is rough, tell it to go screw itself. After all, you still have tomorrow!”
(In loving memory of Carey and Cis Matthiessen.)
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