[Kind of ironic given my last post.]

I found myself in an uncommon situation today.

I’m driving along to the supermarket on my lunch, and I find myself behind a car with their flashers on in the right lane of the highway. I think to myself, “Well, there is snow on the ground and it is a bit wet out, but no need to be that dramatic.”

Within a few more moments, I realize the driver isn’t warning people that they’re driving slow because of the weather, but letting people know they’re a part of a funeral procession.

I look in my rearview mirror and see that I’m right in the thick of what was at one point a joined link of cars with people going to pay their respects for that individual. At one point, with traffic changing lanes, I find myself directly behind the hearse. With my exit coming up next, though, there wasn’t really a way to get out of the procession unless I pulled over on the shoulder, which I had considered for a moment but decided against.

In any case, I couldn’t help but think to myself how such an incidental, unintended moment for me may come off to the family in the procession as the most disrespectful, heartless thing there could be to do. I couldn’t help but think of how my presence in cutting the procession line, even if unintentionally, must be a firm reminder and validation to the family in their moment of deep pain, hurt, and grief, that they’re alone in the loss they’re feeling:

Everyone else is buzzing around like nothing happened, but my world just stopped. Like the love of my life didn’t just vanish from each and every future idea we had spent years imagining together. They won’t be there to remind me about how that one joke actually went. Or to say that same story they’d always share with new people. No annoying cough and hawking in the bathroom every morning. Nothing.

It’s pretty heartbreaking to think about what that must be like for them.

And at the same time, there I am, buzzing off to the store to pick up some spinach, bread, and eggs for lunch. A lunch which I plan to be just one of thousands of lunches, utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most likely never to remembered or thought of again once it’s over.

Meanwhile, this family is coping with the fact that almost nothing in their lives will be the same anymore. It’ll all be shadowed with this empty space, this gap, this hole of what would have been if that person was still here.

Very little will be the same from here. They’ll need to reimagine their whole life. They’ll wish for and play out in their minds just one more chance to spend time together with their loved one. Not even necessarily doing anything, but just being together. Going through the norms of daily life and noticing and soaking in all the small, trivial, insignificant stuff, while feeling so alive during each second of it.

Maybe they’d even imagine having a boring lunch together.

But all of a sudden, there’s no lunch-as-a-means-of-getting-you-through-the-rest-of-your-day type of thought (or lack thereof). In that daydream, the tides have shifted to where there is absolutely nothing you’d rather be doing in the world than sitting right there, looking across from you at one of your favorite people, as you both have that same old boring lunch together, just once more.

“We celebrate the lives of the dead
It's like a man's best party, only happens when he dies
We gather 'round to pay our respects
While their souls are still searching for the light
Searching for the light”

—

City and Colour
Body in a Box