Funerals

I've always hated funerals. I hate the procession, I hate the way I can't cry like everyone else. I hate the way I'm more interested in what those who come say about the deceased than I am in the words written about them. I don't hate this because there is something wrong with me in it. I hate it because it makes me just a little different from most of the people around me. And as much as I like being different, I don't like being seen as uncaring. I still care what people think about me. A friend of mine died a few months ago and I spent a majority of his funeral writing a short story I entered into a short story contest when I was done. I didn't know where the story would go when I started writing it, but it is being rejected as we speak. I cried tears, real tears, for the person I saw in the picture, but the body in front of me wasn't him and I couldn't mourn that.

What I like are wakes. I like the get together where the people talk about who that person was to them. I like the reminder of life more than the presense of death. I like the life that words give to a person. I like the thoughts, when the person is loved, that move through the minds, the genuine smiles, the moved tears. I love the stories that give credence to a life well lived.

The circumstances of death are not always pleasant. Cancer, AIDS, suicide, murder, old age. The presence of death is always lurking and though I don't dislike him, nor do I fear him, I certainly don't like to be around him. Funerals are like constantly being around him and feeling, even if only for a moment, that he has won. I like wakes because they give you the hope that, despite it all, death never gets to win.