Gregorian Rants

Selena and I had to go to a funeral of one of her former classmates from college. He died suddenly this past weekend while on a family vacation at the Jersey shore. Drew was up enjoying a night of crab-eating, beer-drinking, and general festivities; went to bed, and did not wake. He was my age.

I did not know Drew more than as the friend of a girlfriend, but was still thrown back: a combination of shock at the suddenness and difficulty accepting the truth of such unexpected tragedy hitting someone so young.

I was spent most of the viewing and reception either being supportive for Selena and not really thinking much about where we were and the magnitude of what was happening. We have so much structure to the funeral process that sometimes it becomes an exercise -- walk to the front, pause, say condolences, sit, listen to the memories, move to the gravesite, listen to the prayers, place a rose on the casket. It wasn't until and the ritual was over, as we were walking to our car to leave the cemetery that it finally struck me like a blow the stomach: this was it for Drew.

In so many ways his story concluded abruptly: he was in the middle of a vacation; he had incomplete projects at work; he had just drafted his Fantasy Football team; yet suddenly this was it, his life story ends, with no resolution, with no warning. As we drove away, we are forced to close the book, knowing there will be no more to come; Drew shifts in our mind from a part of the present into the past, referenced in antidotes, cherished in memories.