Yesterday was a personal milestone for two reasons. It was the first time I had traveled an hour and a half each way to my home city since having Covid in June 2020. The second was that I attended the Celebration of Life for my younger brother, Christopher. It was lovely to see family and his old friends. It did have the effect of making me feel pretty old, thinking of those guys as perpetually 13, even as they now sport grey hair and talk of their grandchildren.
My sister-in-law and niece made everyone feel welcome, providing lots of pictures to reminisce over. The kids, including Christopher’s granddaughter playing in the back room, reminded us all that life goes on.
It was a difficult journey for me more for the emotional content than the physical. It’s going to reverberate throughout my week, I’m sure.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to attend church service virtually today, as being in a crowd yesterday with not everyone masked made me feel uncomfortable about being in a group today. Covid has made people make so many sacrifices around grief and the normal grieving process.
I’m glad I could participate in yesterday’s celebration of my brother’s life.