Life After Funerals

     We no longer call them funerals; they're now called "life celebrations"...That said, a rose by any other name is still a rose.
     While every fiber of my being believes that life goes on, that there's more to it than what our worn out bodies might attest, this doesn't fill the void when you're coming off a run of them. Only God and time can heal I suppose. Some things you just have to wait out.
     Oddly enough, the funeral's the easy part...a scheduled appointment...a place to be. At least there, we have each other...Others to be there for and others there for you. It's the days that follow you have to watch out for. The finding a new normal when all you want is to go back to the one you had.
    Was talking with a friend today, three weeks after losing his wife of 27 years. "There's a reason they tell you not to make big decisions..." he offered, as he tried to describe the fog...It's like landing in a foreign country... Nothing is familiar, and what is familiar hurts.
     I recall several years back getting a call from a friend's husband three days after her funeral. Out of the blue he had broken into tears...his meltdown brought about by bed sheets he would never wash again.
     Yesterday it was a closet full of T shirts for me ...each came holding a story...a memory...a phrase she had championed...a race she had run.
     Easy to get lost in a pity party.
     The rain didn't help.
     Tears come at the oddest times, but to be fair, small comforts creep in too...Like hearing she saw her daddy on the other side... Like knowing there was family greeting her there, just she was leaving us here.