Well, that wasn’t fun.

So, the funeral was Saturday and as fate would have it, it wasn’t all too cold and the rain had let up by the time we got to the cemetery so the service itself wasn’t a totally drenching one. People showed up to the wake which was nice of them and they showed up for the funeral which was nicer still. You would think after the last 15 months, I would be ready for this but, I guess we’re never ready for the moment when death arrives in our lives.

It will take me awhile to truly believe it, to accept it and absorb it. Everything about the prospect of Pop not being around just seems so unreal and final.

Over the last four days, I have found myself constantly tired. This is mainly the result of sleeping at night in a way where I lie down for a bit, wake up two hours later, am up for a few hours and then fall asleep for another few hours again.

I am never good at these things. I admit it. Honestly, I just don’t know how to deal with death or people who are mourning. A big part of that is because I don’t want to say the wrong thing and without saying something meaningful to someone, something which will truly provide them with comfort, I feel whatever I do say will wind up sounding hollow or phony. My biggest concern over the last few days was choreographing a ceremony and process which would be both dignified and respectful. That it was so important sounds like an odd thing but, having taken care of the man for as long as I did, it was very important to me not to screw it up at the end.

And I was soooo tired. To tell the truth after going to the hospital and seeing him there after he died the first night, there is nothing more I wanted to do than to crawl into bed and just sleep for days, really. I just wanted to wind up in bed and then wake up on a nice warm and sunny day where I could get out and just enjoy the weather and the warmth of the sun on my skin.

Still, it wasn’t to be and there was lots to do over the next 72 hours - phone-calls had to be made, arrangements had to be finalized, there was a question of being dressed properly for the occasion and then there was the matter of being front and center in everything.

I never did write an obituary as I had intended. I just let the funeral home take care of that because after everything else I found it hard to organize my thoughts to put something on paper which I felt was appropriate. I wrote something of a eulogy but, I wound up missing the correct moment to read it and consequently fumbled through some words at the graveside which in retrospect I am not even sure whether or not I was coherent. As it was I kept things short, fighting my own nerves and trying to contain my own desire to wail away. I can’t even remember what I said as it seemed the world was spinning standing there beside an open grave on muddy earth with all these faces pointed at me.

Ouch.

The funeral mass was much nicer than I anticipated it would be, the church was beautiful and the thoughts delivered by the father in attendance would have been hard to follow anyway because it was a fitting and thoughtful sermon. I also think I ate the mother of all communion wafers - the thing the jumbo size communion wafer and considering how long it had been since I had gone for any kind of communion I wonder if the priest didn’t know something I didn’t - I mean seriously it was like a horse pill or something. My cousin’s youngest rode with me in the car which actually was really nice just to have her company.

So, this is what I wrote and what I imagine I would have said if I had gotten the chance. As it was, the father in question would have been a very hard act to follow and while I was sitting in that first pew all kinds of thoughts were running through my head...

“How about the father there? Let’s have a big hand for him!”

No, I don’t think that would’ve worked. Like I said I fumbled through at least part of this at the graveside, it was a lot shorter because I just winged it and at that point I was thinking funerals are very much like awards shows in that they shouldn’t run overly long because you wind up losing the attention of the audience.

Last night, I was trying to think about what I would say to all of you here today. I was hoping to be able to provide something of great insight. However, it was just an overblown ego at work.

They say the only two things which are certain in the world are death and taxes. Today we find ourselves here, confronting just one of those sure things. It is inescapable for all of us. Look around you, no matter what your age, the one thing you can be assured of is one day you WILL die.

Each and every one of us have only a certain number of days on this planet even none of us knows in advance what that number will be. In pop’s case the number turned out to be 30,415 - he didn’t know it and neither did I.

Looking at it now, I am forced to wonder if I had known the exact number of days and we were so very close to the last few, would I have cherished those dwindling days more? And the truth is, I probably would have.

My father lived a full life by the standard with which we measure time, he laughed, he smiled, he had fun but at the end that life - he spoke often of his own unhappiness and regret. He looked back on his life and constantly questioned the decisions he had made.

They haunted him at times and when illness took away some of the awareness of time’s passage, it was a blessing because it freed him of his remorse and in a way took him back to his youth, back to a time when misdeeds and transgressions might be forgotten and he could live in the moment.

Maybe that sounds like a fool’s paradise to some but, if we measure our lives in the context of a finite number of days, we begin to realize how each and every day is such a precious gift. Every day dawns anew, full of promise and hope, challenging us to make of it what we will of it for good or for bad.

Thus, it falls to each of us to make the best possible use of the time we have. The more time we spend looking backwards at our own mistakes instead of leaving them behind us and moving forward to do good just squanders another day.

Pop was a lot of things but, he couldn’t see, never really understood the affect, he had on the world around him - the lives he touched, the good he did, the way he changed the world. I’m not pretending he was perfect but, he did some good while he was here - he touched the lives of the people he came in contact with and that influence spread outward as the people he touched, touched other lives in turn, the way a wave on the surface of a pond spreads outward.

When we come together at funerals, it is to mourn, it is in sadness but why? The truth is, none of us really die, our souls might escape the frail shell that carries them but we live on in others. We live on in the people we touched during our short time here on the planet. I am not saying I won’t miss my father because I will miss him terribly but, in me he will live on. Just as he will live in you whose lives he touched. There are others who have gone before him and who to this day hold a special place in my heart, those people who will never be forgotten.

While I will remember him as a flawed man, he will still in my heart be very much a beloved father and he will be missed. Thank you again for paying your respects here today, it would make him happy to see you all I know.

In any event, I at least think I did a good job with everything and it was the last time I could do anything for him so I wanted to get it right.