Today was a difficult day. I went to the memorial service for my friend's father. Remember the man I mentioned in Old Feelings Revisited........or maybe finally felt As I expected it pulled up more of my own grief about the loss of my father.
I think it was made all the harder by the fact there was so much love in the room. Looking around at how real families care about the loss of a loved one was difficult to see. I couldn't help but think this isn't what it would be like for me.
One of the people who spoke was the older brother of the deceased. The man was fraught with guilt because he spent so many years away from his brother and now he's gone. The man said he'd taken good care of his children and grandchildren but had been too busy for time with his brother. Now there is not time at all. It's a regret he will carry throughout the rest of his life.
I couldn't help but think of my own siblings as he spoke. I was raised with a sister, four brothers and a step brother. One of them gives a damn about what happens to me, the rest wouldn't care if I croaked tomorrow. They might even be glad. I don't know. Growing up in a dysfunctional home killed my family of origin. I'm not just grieving the death of my father but the loss of a family as well.
I feel tears on many levels today. Sometimes they leak out and sometimes I just feel the pressure like a knot in my stomach, an ache in my heart as the sadness washes over me. As much as I want to look forward and appreciate what I have, it is times like these that it's hard not to reflect on where I came from and all that I missed.
I couldn't help but think as I looked around the room at all the mourners how lucky these people are. They may have lost their loved one, but they were lucky enough to have had him in the first place. I can't even imagine what that was like...........
However, I do feel glad that I have managed to meet such people and get to know them. I feel privileged that some of them call me, friend. Being able to look around the room and see genuine love gives me hope for this goofy world of ours.
I do have to say one thing about the service though.......the minister made a comment something like "All of us struggle with God......the idea of Him and what He wants of us...." And it hit me.......I don't. I do not struggle at all. I feel totally comfortable in my relationship with God. That may sound funny coming from a person who doesn't go to church.....but I really do feel safe and secure in my relationship.
Funny how I went from a day of grief to feeling safe and secure, don't you think?
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3 comments:
Maybe your relationship with God is the way it is BECAUSE you don't go to church. Society has a way of skewing things to fit its own purpose in certain arenas.
I find it funny how days can end up the opposite way to which they started.
Lynn, I don't know about that. Despite all of the screwed up notions of God I was force fed, I still managed to come through this with a firm sense of God from things I learned in church. Go figure, huh? I know it sounds wierd and I'm sure it's affected by my own experience with the supernatural but that 7 yo part of me managed to learn about God in the purest form, uncorrupted by the humans around her. It is that part of me that influences my relationship with God. It's the older, more cynical parts of me that keep me out of church for precisely the reason you mention and that 7 yo part is fine with that, it fits right in with what she believes.
Kahless, yes, I'm with you. Sometimes you just never know where life is going to take you, even when you think it's all a given.
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