The Things We Do

Today Dan and I attended a memorial service for the 30 year old son of a consultant Dan works with.  We never met him, but Dan really liked the consultant and he and his wife have been so very gracious to us.

I talked to Charlotte about why she was going to a friend's house while we were gone and what we were doing.  I realized that trying to explain our social customs is really hard sometimes.  Why do we have memorial services?  What do you say to someone who lost their son?  What even can you say?  So instead I just show up.  I don't know what to say, but I'm here and I'll stand in line for an hour and a half to show you that I care.

We got to the funeral home and stood in line to give our condolences.  An hour later we were closer to the front of the line and looking at photos of this young man.  He's my age.  There are photos of him young, when I was young.  He was in college when I attended college.  His dad went through a misguided mustache phase, like mine did.  (Sorry Daddy, but that thing looks so funny in your wedding photos.)  I thought of all the life that he lived.  And all the life he had yet to live and wont.

I thought of all the funerals I've been to in the past.  They were hard because it was my family, but everyone was so much older than me (at the time).  Also, probably I was so much younger.  I was emotionally much like Charlotte tonight, I was physically older, but still I didn't really get it.

Tonight I got it.  Did that come to me with motherhood?  Understanding another mother's love?  This mom, this son, this loss.  Of course I have never lost a son so I can't fully get it.  I can't because just thinking about the possibility makes my heart break and hurt so bad tears come to my eyes.

And then suddenly I'm thinking of the most recent funeral of a loved one that I wasn't able to attend.  The funeral of my cousin's tiny baby girl.  So much love, so much life, so much promise lost.  She will never have walls of photos of her.  Snapshots of her life.  I'm standing in a room filled with strangers for a memorial service for someone I never met and my eyes are tearing up and I'm struggling to keep it under control because who cries for someone they don't know?  Only I'm not crying for someone I don't know, I'm crying for everyone I do know.

And probably that's why we have memorial services.  It gives everyone a safe place to grieve.  A free pass on tears over people we will never stop missing.  A way of showing love without needing to have the right words.