The world doesn’t bother to mourn with us today.  On our ride to the funeral home the sun is not hiding, the skies are not shrouded with clouds, and the birds have not hushed their songs.

   We reach the destination and step down from the vehicle.  As if to nail the hammer in the coffin, we all wear matching black attire.  I walk inside, black heels sounding on the fresh pavement.  Click, click, click, like the second hand of a clock. 

   Once inside, I turn my attention to the funeral home directors.  They present their practiced faces of perfectly mixed comfort and sadness to first one, then another family member. 

   Tears are shed during the service, and for good reason.  Sometimes we know we’ll see them again – their lives revealed where their home was.  But this man is truly lost to us.  Hopeless is a terrible word.

   One after another person gets up to face the black garbed crowd and speak a few tearful words.  “A good man…” was heard at least a dozen times, accompanied by such key words as “family” and “legacy.”

   But what lies beneath the black ties, and the heels, and the tear stained faces?  Truth.  We all know who he was – who he was really.  So when the man with the worn book said that “We are gathered here today to remember…” what he really could have said was that we were gathered here to begin to forget.  This would be day one of replacing our real memories with the beauty of retrospect.