ow face

you know what is such a difficult thing to do...it's watching someone lose a loved one.
losing someone close to you is so painful...but watching someone else do it? !!! that person is somehow so much stronger than you...because you're the one bawling on her shoulder at the funeral home when it's her dad that died and she's handing you a kleenex...you're the one squirming because it's so hard to know what to say and how to say it...i mean, you want to say something so you don't look stupid or insensitive, but there's only one smart, sensitive way to say what you want to say and it's somewhere behind the brainfreeze...and all the extended family and people who are affected by this loss---i feel so cheap, telling them i'm sorry, while i've never spoken to them before and probably never will again...
and i feel bad going on with my life. going to work in the morning, not doing ALL i can to show support for the friend who just lost her mom...even though i don't often talk to this person, and don't often see her, it still seems like such a big deal. and it IS. why can't i get my bum in gear and just call?
and does this bother other people too? is 'third party funeral issue' just a freak thing that bothers me...? funerals are hard for everyone...maybe that's what's so difficult...the indirect pain reminds of past losses, or triggers imagination--how would i be responding if i were in this situation...? would i go sit in a hole in the backyard and camp out there for a year or two while this all blows over? (yeah, i would) i guess the indirectness of the pain means it's not so numbing. so there's still brain power to be focusing on going back to work after the funeral's over, or on doing the laundry that night or something dumb and stupid like that---why would work or laundry be important when someone's burying a loved one.

meanwhile, from a christian point of view, i'm jealous...i want to be done with this world, it's getting old...at least, from a christian point of view, there's real comfort to be had... real, rock-solid comfort in the fact that this person who was so close is now safe in the arms of Jesus---yeah, that's some rock-solid comfort right there. and there's more...we'll see that person one day, alive and well...

is it michelle's birthday today? somehow i think it was sunday. (i really should know this)