The Funeral day
Getting my change to say goodbye.
Yesterday was the day of the funeral. Funerals are always difficult as we are saying our last goodbyes. It brings up lots of complicated emotions. This was my eight time of attending someones funeral. My very first time was only at six years old in 2004. Since then someone has passed away every few years. The last one being my grandma in 2019.
we had not seen each other for a few years. We used to visit them when I was younger, so i do have some vague memories about her. She had Alzheimer`s decease and during her last year she was not able to talk that much. We did not visit her because she did not recognise people properly anymore, so we would probably have made her confused and caused unnecessary distress. It was also due to living quite far away from her.she spend the last two months in palliative care.
The funeral service itself was quite short, we sang a few hymns , the priest said a few words about her life,we prayed and then everyone got to bring flowers on top of her coffin. Her wish was to be cremated so we did not get to witness the rest of the process. So people moved to a place nearby to have lunch,coffee and cake. It was a space to share memories.
later that night after arriving home everything just hit me all at once.All the memories from the previous funerals and people that i have lost before flooded back to me. The tears did not stop coming for a few hours or something. later that night, i was able to fall asleep while holding a stuffed animal from my childhood. It helped a lot. This had something to do with my inner child feeling lost and confused by big emotions so hugging something soft soothed her.
Besides the emotional challenges and how scary it is to face someones death I am glad that we all went and shared this special last memory with her. She is still with us but in a different form and memories will live in our hearts forever. ❤
