Why Is It

Author's Note: I have had to pick and choose what funerals I would attend since the pandemic began back in 2019/20. People are still not having funerals within the first weeks after a death. The funeral I am attending today was for a June death, for example.

My brother from Texas came up for his brother-in-law's funeral. Lee’s children are living here in Minnesota. This is all the Texans’ home state. Besides being his brother-in-law, Lee was really his brother, as they had lived close to each other for probably 50 years.

Right after the service, my brother moved to Texas with his wife to be where her mother was living. Photos of my brother were almost always with Lee. They were always together, playing cards, in church, building a patio and deck this year in the hot sun.

Everyone in our family knew Lee, and it had been many years since he lived in Minnesota. Our brother, who is ten years younger than I, was friends with Lee when he lived here. He went to Texas after his divorce to visit his mom and family and met Bunny, who was from Texas, and there he has lived since.

Lee was the same age as my husband. He died from cancer. He was told he could continue to fight it, but he decided not to and died shortly after that decision. I was at my niece's wedding in May, and Lee and Bunny were not at the wedding as he had just gotten out of the hospital.

When I was at a funeral of a friend who was in his 80s, I wondered out loud how I could have friends so old. The people around me at the time, a granddaughter and her mother, looked at me like… duh! Okay, I get it, I said, it’s because I am old.

Then I said, I have to get more younger friends if I plan to be around for a while yet. My husband teases me when I talk about not being around for much longer. My mother died at age 75. My dad's age doesn’t count, as he fell from a building at work when I was just turning ten years old.

My husband had a lot of old people in his life. His dad and stepmom died in their late 80s. His aunt was 103. His grandparents were in their 90s. Then I tell him that I have to go first. Who will open my jars, change the oil and fix my car, haul things in and out for me, and fix things around the house?

My brother died during the pandemic, and funerals were starting to happen again, where people could gather together. I was so relieved. I didn’t have to grieve alone. Our children and grandchildren could be together. He was more like a son to me and a sibling to my children.

He was born when I was 19, two years before my daughter, who became his bossy sister. When she tattled on Tim, she would say things like, “Grandma, when walking to the bus, he spat a luggie in front of me and then laughed as I avoided stepping on it.”

My sister and mother died before the pandemic, in 2009 and 2010, and before my brother. So many people died during the pandemic that I had to miss their funeral. It became a time to pick and choose, and my children thought it best for me not to attend funerals at all.

In our culture, it is important to be there, even when not close family. My friends were going to a funeral a week for a week. My sister friend’s husband died during the pandemic, from Covid, and she couldn’t even sit by him as he lay dying.

She had to get over covid first before she could go to the hospital, and then she was okayed to sit outside his room at a window. Really sad. No other visitors or supporters for her.

I visited with a cousin just months before she died, and decided not to attend her funeral as we had such a good time talking about the old times when we were kids that I wanted to remember her that way. People understand, but there is some guilt for not going to support her children.

I encourage tears, no matter where or when they come out. Let them flow, don’t stop others' tears by offering a Kleenex. Give them a Kleenex when it is clear they are done crying. Tears are healing. We need them to help us heal from the loss and to prevent things like cancer.

When I told my husband that, he talked about the few cases of cancer in his family. Aunt’s that never cried, and he connected those dots. Then, an aunt whose sisters thought she would die young, as she had this and that as a young girl and woman, but she cried a lot, they said. She outlived those younger sisters.

I encourage tears and will teach people I’ve worked with how not to cry when they need that, too.

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Published first at Mercury Press on medium.com