Burial in the Snow.

photo by R R

Last weekend we buried my husband's 98 year old grandfather in Illinois. The ground was so frozen that they thought they would not be able to dig his grave on time and they had to burn a fire above his plot for almost a whole day to thaw it. I have never been so cold!

photo by R R

photo by R R

 Death is one of those doors I referred to in my last post that cannot be replaced by a different one. The door of the person who dies is closed forever to the ones he or she leaves behind. I am not scared of Death, but sad about the emptiness it leaves behind, of all of those unasked questions that will never be answered, all of those conversations we will never be able to have with the person that has died. Those thoughts are gloomy, but also encouraging in the sense that they make me super aware of the importance to life my life fully, to not wait to tell those close to me that I love them, to never leave anything for tomorrow. It is important not to take our life for granted, to make the most of it and put things in perspective.

As I said before, life has been hard lately so I attended the funeral with a dark cloud over my head. But then I started thinking about the fleetingness of life and of how precious every moment is, so I decided to  let my cloud go and in the end I realized that everything that has been obscuring my heart and mind lately is minimal when put in perspective with the bigger picture. I surprised myself by walking away in a much brighter mood.

photo by R R

Maybe that "grandpa" door will never be replaced, but his funeral opened to me many new doors. I got to meet some of J's family I had never met before, visit a new place and learn about his family's (now my family, too) history. New interesting and exciting people to grow fond of and get to know better over time. I am excited about that and happy that although I would not have chosen to meet them at a funeral, the emotional rawness of the occasion made us able to connect in a deeper level than a different circumstance would have allowed.

I look forwards the future moments we will share and have come back home looking at things in a much brighter light.

R

R R's self portrait