Was at a funeral for an old family friend last week. After the time in hospital and interactions with life and death and dying there, and other friends losing parents - it seems to be coming up a lot. Part of it is just my age and therefore the age of my cohort's parents.
Ten, fifteen years ago, it was weddings as my cohort was doing that, now it seems, we see less cheerful reasons for getting together with people we grew up with. Looked at through an Irish filtered lens, it means those parents have made it to a ripe old age, and have lived full lives - it should be a celebration of a long life, well lived. We left behind, struggle to see it that way.
Even when we know our parents are only part of the people we knew they were, as mental and physical abilities drain away what they are, it's hard to have them go. These events are sometimes more a mourning for a life they used to live, then the life they were living near the end.
Should we mourn the loss of who they were, when that has past long since? Or celebrate the life that was, when it's time is done? Having lost parts of myself to illness and injury I recognise that the losses don't diminish what a person can contribute, until it does. Many elderly folks pass before their ability to contribute ends, so it's not a clear line.
That said, contrasting that with seeing lives cut short in their prime, it seems the Irish have a point. If it's a long life, well lived, it should be a celebration of that well living, not a mourning for the loss. We aren't here for ever, and we shouldn't go forward as if we will. By that token, we should celebrate the aspects of the well lived life - not mourn that the inevitable passing has taken place.
The western culture's obsession with the self, crystallizes in the focus on a self's loss. If those people have contributed to the society around them, the people around them, than they have done their part in life. It's not a mourning, it's a pat on the back for a job well done, as they go on to what may or may not come next.
Yes I'm steeling myself for the eventual passing of my own parents with this, but there is a truth there as well. Cycle of life. The cries of a small child at this service didn't occur, but I have witnessed services where it did. It seemed to crystalize the idea of making way for those who come next - of having a time, and that time passing.
We all die. We all have a time. It passes. We move on to whatever does or doesn't come next. It's life. It's how it's supposed to work. It isn't fair or just or reasonable. It is life after all. Fairness and justice are constructs of the living. That it ends unfairly is somehow appropriate to the mortal coil that so resists it's shrugging off, or usually does.
We are a community. It's the contribution to that community that are to be cherished. Great capitalists and political leaders may point to buildings with their names on them - but for the janitor or junior staff member that remembers a friendly face that always called them by name, as they passed in the hall, the name on the building isn't the tribute that matters. It's those moments in the hall.