Completely Surreal
Thoughout my life, I've been to several "open casket" funerals ... I could never really put my finger on what I felt as I finally made my way to see a person lying in state, endless sleep.
It's all very surreal, outside you see the hustle and bustle -- people being so alive and interactive. Then you when you enter the hall and make your way to see the departed person -- you can't help but thinking, gee it really wasn't too long ago when that person was so full of life, hope, feelings, expressions, emotions, and all the animated things that life expresses through a body
I guess the best way to describe it is sleep, except that you will never see that person's form again. I certainly do not wish to dishonor the dead, but it seems odd to me to see a body lying in state. We already have our memories of the departed, and that lives on in us -- why is it that we must see that person's body, when "they" are no longer there. I guess maybe when someone suffers for a while, it can be somewhat therapeutic to see their body at rest
But somehow when someone dies suddenly, just out of the blue -- I think that seeing a body in state is very psychologically jarring because ... in the end, we must come to terms with the fragility that is our life, and really how impermanent everything is -- no matter how important things and tasks may be in the short run, and may run our lives ... we all must end sometime, and I think that so very few of us are prepared for that eventuality
The eventuality of course being the utterly incomprehensible and surreal ... certainty or prediction that we most certainly will die someday -- and we don't know when. I suppose it is why some would love to cling to concepts such as the afterlife, reincarnation, Heaven/Hell, the Rapture, etc. I guess it's hard for everyone to wrap their mind around the concept that this existence, no matter how good, how bad, what have you ... will one day end, for some suddenly and unexpectedly, for some after a full life, for some after physical struggles, for some too soon
I will stay away from the whole "you aren't promised tomorrow" ... I think we all know it, but very few of us must confront it right now in our lives. Ironic that so few of us, present company included, choose not to live, try, do, be the things that we know at some level is our path in life.
Getting back to funerals, in the past two years, I have been to two for people who were in their mid-30s ... when I was younger, I went to a friend's funeral who died at eleven ... I have been to a funeral of a good man who worked hard all his life, lived right, yet died within the first month of his retirement ... I am more aware of transitions now, or the so-called circle of life, as I have seen people who were significant to my life -- age, develop unfortunate diseases like cancer, or just pass one day when I or anyone else least expected it
And so it is , when we die ... the body is at peace, the soul lives on ... but this temporary thing called life is really what you make of it ... but then again, we all know that -- the time to live is now