A Moment of Silence

i went to my first funeral yesterday. family friends. two kids. one a senior in high school - a girl. the other a junior in high school - a boy. their father suddenly and seemingly randomly passed away of a heart attack in his sleep early friday morning. he had just turned 45 on new year's. he was young and healthy. he was a really gentle and smiling person, not just generous after life but always generous (we didn't have to pull for straws to find his good qualities). the breadwinner of the family. so now they are one member short.

i couldn't stop crying during the ceremony. it was mainly when the children shared their memories of their father with everyone. their tears came and then mine. i had never even seen a dead body up that close. he looked nothing like the person i remembered. lying there so still. my father really couldn't stop crying and my father never cries. except at
funerals.

in any case, i realized we could all go. at any moment. and it's cliched but there's no time like the present. to say what we need to. to make sure people know what we think of them. to put trivialities aside and take the world in an hour, in a minute, in a second. it's not that we need to do everything right now, right away. but just to acknowledge how fleeting this all is. how momentary. and to expand those moments to be more than they are capable of. and i do believe that a body is just a body. and someone's spirit is still out there. even if that's just a comfort to my mortality.