Stories of a life well lived

I attended a funeral visitation yesterday to be with a longtime friend whose father passed away this week. He had suffered from pancreatic cancer for several years, so it wasn’t necessarily unexpected, but it was still heart-wrenching for those left behind to mingle memories and tears. I think the hardest part for me was dealing with the fact that he missed getting to meet his newest grandson by three weeks – my friend is 8 ½ months pregnant with her first child.

As I sat on a rather ornate settee waiting for the visitation to begin, a chatty, heavily-bearded gentleman began to tell me stories of my friend’s father. They had worked together, fished together, hunted together. The stories were all humorous and lighthearted, and all were told with a smile and twinkling eye. I don’t think he was trying to make light of a sad and serious situation, rather, he was communicating the only way he knew how that this man had lived. He had lived, and was to be celebrated.

And whether he knew it or not, this kind gentleman was making sense of his friend’s death – or more so of his life – by telling stories, and helping me make a bit of sense of it all, too.

Thank you, sir. May you live well.