In Death we Live

Yesterday I attended the funeral service of an older friend’s mother. She was over 80 years of age and was considered to have done well in that regard.

It was not the good things that were said about this woman that caught my interest as I have long concluded that once you are dead you are so loved and you are very good.

My friend is at least 60 years and the first of 7 0r 8 siblings. Her brother is over 50 years. When I went to see my friend after I heard that her mum passed, she was tearing up talking about her mum and imagining what her mum would be saying now. She said she will really miss her mum. I told her that I thought that it is easier to deal with this separation when we are older. She said even as old as she is, she never really thought her mum will die… ( a little strange). She wanted confirmation that she did enough to show her mum that she really loved her while she was alive. I told her that I am sure she did.

Yesterday she was to thank the people for attending the service and the officiating priests and she broke down again and could barely talk. I can understand my friend could be quite emotional so it was not her tears that shook me up, it was her brother openly weeping after church. I have never seen that in my adult life.

As I left the church, I could not even remember any of the lofty achievements of this mother of 7 and they were plenty but the picture of the depth of the loss portrayed in the faces of her two grown children especially told me a lot. I concluded that even if she did or did not achieve much in terms of accolades, she was a mother who loved her children and was devoted to them.

The whole day I thought about this and I know she was one great mother even in death. If you will not be forgotten by the people you love then you live even though you die. Truly in death we live.