On Monday, the family and I attended the funeral of my uncle's dad (Bill Fite). It struck me as I was sitting in the small country church that I wasn't very phased by death. After all, for Christians, death is only the parting of our spirit from this material world. What lies in store for our soul (given that we've lived a life worthy of our call to holiness) far surpasses what we could ever get from this earthly life. Of course I was sad to see the passing of a man held so dear to his family, but I couldn't help but be hopeful that Bill was in a far better place than I was, sitting in that little creaky church. All that saddened me was seeing the sadness of the family...perhaps they, too, would find hope in Christ's conquering of death. But at the very least, it's always a little hard to cope with never being able to see someone again. What completely wrecked my composure was seeing his great-grandchildren (about 7 and 4, give or take a couple of years on each), who certainly did not understand the circumstances. Their tears were sincerely hard to witness, but the family support was beautiful.
An aside: at the wake, the four-year-old was pulling on the bottom half of the casket, determined to look over the edge of it (but only succeeding in making several people anxious that the thing would topple over). Upon asking the child what he could possibly be doing, he replied simply: "I want to see where the other half of grandpa is." Kids just say the darnedest things...
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