The funeral was yesterday

Tweet

Yesterday was the day. The day we put a family friend in the ground, way too soon. This one has hurt probably more than most of the other funerals I've been to. I think it's because she was so young and she was leaving behind her two boys. The funeral was difficult. It was open casket, and I couldn't go up close because that wasn't the last image I wanted of her. I wanted my last memory of her to be of her smile. She had such a contagious smile. I was her brother's friend, but somewhere along the way, she became one too. We were talking about how she seemed to know everyone. I found out about her death from someone I didn't even know knew her. I found it interesting that all of her family and friends were in the front of the funeral home, away from the casket, while all of her husband's family and friends were in the back of the funeral home with the casket. My friend said most of us seemed to be on the same page and that is this wasn't how we wanted to remember her. Her own mother refused to go up to the casket. My friend said this isn't what his sister would have wanted. She would have preferred to be cremated, but that ultimately, she would have been ok with whatever her husband and kids wanted. I talked to some people I hadn't seen or heard from in years. My friend's former roommate came up and found me when he saw I signed the guest book. I was watching the slideshow when he kind of startled me by walking up behind us. At that point, we were the only ones there he knew because my friend hadn't shown up yet. We got there early because we were trying to avoid the construction through town. We got to laughing and talking about old times, and I think my friend's sister would have been happy to see the people she cared about bonding at her funeral. She just wanted everyone to be happy. As I watched the slideshow, I noticed they did use the picture my husband put under my friend's post in the comment section from the time she and my friend came to visit us when he was in town. I love that picture of her because it captured her spirit. She sat down on my son's little tricycle and smiled big as my husband took the picture as her brother and I talked in the background. I saw her boys, and they seemed to be handling it well in the moment. I don't know how they're doing at home. They had to hold the service briefly while her youngest used the bathroom, and we got a bit of a laugh out of that. They just looked like typical little boys enjoying the attention they were getting. I saw them run through several times as I was talking to my friend. They were chasing his son. I just hope that the boys will still get to see my friend and his mom now that his sister is gone. After the service, we all got in our cars for the procession. We weren't sure how this would go because where she is buried is out of town. There were multiple ways we could go, and one of the ways was through construction, and I figured they'd want to avoid that, and they did. The other way we had to cross a highway, so I wasn't sure how that would work if they would be able to stop traffic for that, or not, and I was surprised they did. I knew we didn't stop for stop lights or stop signs, but I didn't know how the highway would work. They managed to stop both sides on the highway, and we went across. She was buried in a small cemetery near her house out in the country. We had to park on the side of the road because there was no way all of those cars were going to fit in the cemetery. While the guy who was doing the sermon before the burial was talking, a butterfly flew up from out of nowhere and landed on the flowers next to him. He kind of paused to look at it, we all did. It stayed there for a little bit before flying through the crowd of people. I'd like to believe that was her telling us she was at peace.