Weddings and funerals

We waked Charlie on Tuesday and the funeral service was held yesterday on a rainy, gray day. His girls spoke about him, his life, and their hopes for the future and near broke everyone's hearts.

In the past three weeks I've probably seen 99 percent of my family between a wedding and this funeral. At the wedding I danced with Lindsey - Charlie's baby granddaughter - in my arms as his daughter Christina watched and laughed. Yesterday, I looked on as Charlie's coffin was loaded into the hearse and driven away into the gray and the rain. We walked back into the crowded anteroom of the church, drank coffee, and visited with people we seldom see together anymore except at weddings and funerals. And later we went to Bob and Beth's house, talked the old family stories, and I looked at the generation behind us, Mimi; Rob; Riley; Colin; Ashley, Katherine and Kimberly, Christina, all the ones not there and those still to come. A long line of family stretching back into the past and into the future, and this day played out over and over again.

I should come up with something more profound, I guess, but Frost said it for me long ago,

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned in life: It goes on." -Robert Frost

And our ship sails on.