A Mom, a Blog, and the Life In-Between

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Death, Friendships and Rainy Wednesday Afternoons

It seems so appropriate, doesn't it, to have it rain the day someone is buried.

When I stepped out of the church earlier today, the sky was gray; the rain began as we all made our way to our cars. It felt like a fitting punctuation to what has been a surreal 24 hours for me.

I got the news yesterday that the father of an old (former) friend had passed away. His death was sudden and unexpected, and hearing about it was pretty shocking. It instantly made me think that the death of a parent of someone I've known since my teenage years makes all too real my own parents' mortality (his dad was the same age as mine).

But my thoughts have stretched farther than this; particularly at the funeral mass, I found myself thinking about so many things....

... like my relationship (or not) with this friend. We had a falling out years ago, due to a very private matter over which I felt he had no say, especially when his "say" was mainly about him and had little to do with me or the other person involved. Prior to that, though, we'd been friends since high school, and we ran in the same circles. No matter what happened to our friendship, I will always have to owe him a debt of gratitude for being the guy who introduced me to Ben, and for arranging it so that Ben would have a chance to talk to me and ask me out.

.... and considering the strained nature of our relationship, what exactly was I doing there? My prevailing thought when I heard the news was that I had to go - because in my culture, in the way I was raised, all feuds take a back seat to death. For death, you put everything aside and show up and pay your respects.

.... but being in that church and seeing other people who had long ago shown me they were no real friends of mine was so odd. I hold no grudges against them, but awkwardness is awkwardness, and as the priest talked about the fleeting nature of life, I found myself thinking of the days when I hung out with these people, when I viewed them differently than I do now. Not that I view them particularly awfully or anything - we just had fun as social acquaintances but had no real basis for friendship.

.... and in the midst of all these thoughts about friendships, death of parents, how fleeting life is, how life and love take an infinite amount of faith, I found myself thinking about, most improbably, the second child I so very badly want but feel extremely unready for. He/she exists already, by my sheer desire for him/her. To find myself suddenly yearning for and fearing this unknown baby - in a funeral mass - made no sense to me. But for some unexplainable reason, I felt that child very close to me in church today.

In the end, as we paid our respects to the deceased's family, my (former) friend hugged me and thanked me for being there, expressing that it meant a lot to him. And I hope it did. I hope as he deals with his father's death he too thinks about friendship and the fleeting nature of life and how the choices we make forever mark our lives; and of how there are moments when all grudges can and should and must be set aside in an effort to comfort, to reach out, and to acknowledge and be awed by the fragility of life.

Labels: death, friendships, relationships

Posted by Tere @ 11/14/2007 | Permalink |

3 Comments

Miss posted at 11/14/2007 5:37 PM
It is sad that death makes us aware of who is in our lives, and who is not.

slouching mom posted at 11/14/2007 8:46 PM
i'm glad your presence there was a comfort to him.

zdoodlebub posted at 11/15/2007 8:34 AM
One of the best emotional experiences of my life was at a similar type funeral - friend's parent, unexpected, tragic.

It was a private thing for me, not really related to this friend, but in viewing their grief and in feeling all that depth of emotion, I was able to release a lot of pettiness, jealousy and other unattractive junk I'd been carrying. The emotions of that day gave me a kind of release...cleared the haze of things that are unimportant.