Undoubtedly, the toughest things one must experience in one’s lifetime are the loss of loved ones.

My eyes are puffy, my nose is red, my sense of humor is completely rent; I’m all ripped up after today’s funeral.  It’s so hard to think of this vital person abruptly gone as if squirted off the face of the earth like a watermelon seed.  I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like for his immediate family members.

His friend and hunting partner, one of several with him at the end, eulogized him today.  One moment he is there, commenting on the blue of the sky and the oddity of falling snow, the next celebrating taking his first caribou, the next he is gone.  It’s as if he disappeared into a crevasse in the ice or stepped through an invisible door in the universe.  It was hard enough to hear this recounting, feeling in his voice a sense of obligation and guilt, knowing they could do little fast enough to save him in the remoteness of the Canadian wilderness.

But hearing the daughter struggle through her own tribute -- describing her feelings of utter joy and pride for her father while choking back the nearly incapacitating sorrow she felt – completely broke me up.

I lost it, tears unrestrainedly falling on my face, raining down my coat, leaving me fumbling for another tissue.

A young woman, really not much more than a child, should never be faced with this challenge.  She’s still a teenager, for crying out loud.  Literally, for crying out loud.

It is difficult to see her grandparents so bereft at this break in the natural order of things.  The elderly and infirm go first; they should not be here to experience the loss of children.  I can see this in my in-laws as they’ve suffered through the loss of their son; it wasn’t right, it wasn’t his turn.  I could see it today in the deceased’s parents; it shouldn’t have been their son now, not before the elderly.

We should all bury our parents some day, bearing them out of the world as they bore us into it.  It’s the way it should be, the expected rhythm of the universe.

But no youth should have to experience this loss this early, before the other comforts arrive in our that help us bear loss.  No babies to buoy the spirits, no spouse to hold one’s hand, no previous experience with loss through the death of grandparents.  We take for granted how important these things are to helping us bear the loss of parents.

This young woman is old enough to be on her own; she will be a great comfort to her mother in the days ahead.  This is a good thing.  But I wonder if my nieces and nephew are not better off than her, having lost their father before they even reached school age.  By adulthood they will not fully ken the enormity of loss when in a decade or two they walk down the aisle escorted by a doting uncle, or are feted on graduation by a loving stepfather.

I can’t think about this any more; it’s just too tough to take any longer.

9:12:49 PM    comment []