A Sad Time

I haven't felt much like blogging the past few days. We lost another friend last week.

Mike died unexpectedly. Cancer. Not diagnosed until the very end.

He was 34 years old.
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Last night, my husband and I attended the gathering of friends at the funeral home. Because Mike was a down-to-earth, Harley guy, at his father's and his fiance's request we donned jeans and t-shirts and gathered at the funeral home. Mike's Harley, a beautiful machine now draped with flowers to commemorate his passing, stood majestically on a trailer attached to his pickup truck.

As I expected, the place was packed. The three rooms allotted for the gathering of friends weren't nearly enough to hold us all, and we milled around outside on the grounds of the funeral home. There was no laughter as one sometimes encounters upon the passing of an elderly person. The most difficult part of the evening: speaking to Mike's father, who lost his other son to cancer when the boy was but a teenager. I've never seen Mike's father look so sad. Broken, really. I don't know how he'll recover from the shock of losing his two sons to cancer. He had thought that Mike had escaped this terrible disease. Obviously, not so.

Today will be taken up with the rites we use to honor those who have left this life. The funeral service. The procession to the cemetery, the procession to include Mike's truck trailering his beloved Harley. The graveside service. Gathering at the Moose Lodge for fellowship after the services.

The day will be a long one. We don't want to say good-bye! But we will. What choice do we have?

Our friend Mike was a part of our family gatherings and a regular at the VFW where my husband tends bar. We saw our friend often, and he never failed to have a smile and to share a joke or two. As the phrase goes, "He was the life of the party."

We're going to miss Mike. A lot.