As I am driving over the mountain pass to the eastern side of the
state so that I can attend my grandfather's funeral service, I am struck
by the realization that I have alot of unfinished grief rolling around
in my heart. It occurs to me that a fresh loss of someone close to me
brings up memories of each and every loss I've encountered in my life
up to this point. It also reinforces to me the preciousness and
fragility of human life. It seems as though, to get through my days, I
cannot allow myself to think of such things very often. That in the course
of normal daily living... the reality of the fleeting nature of life, must, for
reasons of my very sanity, be pushed back far from my surface consciousness.
If I didn't push it away, I fear that it could overtake me,
rendering me incapable of performing even the simplest of daily tasks for
fear of life's fragility. So, on the day of a funeral service for
someone that I loved, I allow myself the indulgence of wallowing in
my fears... and I do reach out to my surviving loved ones, and hold
them just a bit too tightly... with the not so pleasant realization,
that nobody lives forever, not even the people I love and would hate to
lose the most.