no black suit required..

Another day, another funeral.

I was thinking about a friend today, a friend who didn't start out that way—quite the opposite, in fact. Then, quickly and strangely enough, she became someone special, platonically, in my life. We shared our personal journeys, our pasts—hers as a refugee from Vietnam, mine as a refugee from a life lived alone.

Then one day, after a disagreement I can't even remember the details of, came the sudden death. Not of the person, the friend, but of the relationship. Everything we had both expressed to each other about our friendship—how she believed it was my mom in heaven who brought us together because I needed someone I could talk to about the grief and loss of my mother. All of that died in an instant..

So many people who were once a part of my life no longer are, and the funerals haven't all been ones I had to get dressed up for and attend in person. Some have been mental funerals like this one, for those still alive. Old friends who shared all the secrets.. Family members I grew up with. The people I once assumed would remain at least in part in my life simply because they always had been, and others like this one who came unexpectedly out of the blue and became important almost overnight.

Life has a way of quietly rearranging the cast on this journey..

People move on. Relationships change. Friendships fade. Families fracture. Sometimes there is an argument, sometimes a betrayal, sometimes nothing dramatic at all. A person who once occupied a large part of our life gradually becomes someone we no longer know..

And in a way, I hold mental funerals for them like today.

Not funerals of grief in the traditional sense, but acknowledgments that something has ended. We stop expecting the phone call. We stop thinking about them every day. Their name slowly moves from the present tense of our lives into the past.

The peculiar thing is that they are still out there somewhere, quite possibly doing exactly the same thing with us..

Over a long enough life, we collect these invisible endings. Some are our decision. Some are theirs. Some happen almost without anyone deciding anything at all. 

We remember the people. Occasionally we wonder what became of them. Often we wonder if they ever think of us? 

And then we keep moving.

I attended this one in my underpants..