A funeral...

There was an enormous visitation and funeral for my brother Paul.

The ironic thing is the younger you are the more folks there are who know you, remember you, or simply are alive to attend your funeral. Whole high school gymnasiums are full for victims of tragic teenage car crashes and grand old people who lived long and done much are sometimes attended by only those who've been hired to carry the pall.

My brother was somewhere in between.

We're grateful for it all, that wave of care and support and kind words and fond memories that washed over us again and again. Even though standing under it exhausted us it left an indelible imprint on us, an image that we can draw on again and again when the harder times, the questioning times, come.

And they will.

I suspect that one day it will hit me, the randomness of it all, how unfair it seemed, the struggle of what lies ahead for his wife and children. And God and I will talk. Actually we'll argue, or rather I will. I will shout and cry and pound my feet on the floor because I am finite in the face of infinity. I will lose the battle, I certainly hope to, but I will make my stand anyway.

Until that time I will rest and try to get my soul untangled from it all. People are counting on me and that gives me a framework from which I can hang the threads of my life. I plan to take the weekend after next off and a quiet lake, a mandolin, and the cool fall winds will be restorative.

I suspect, too, that my own life will change in all of this. Not simply the obvious loss but rather the trajectory of things will be different. I want to write more. I have new responsibilities. Old ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up have an increased urgency. What it means to be part of my family has changed.

Death takes away and adds in a curious arithmetic.