Death & Beauty

Death has been around my head in the past years, always knocking on the door to try to stir up my peace. I have lost several family members, some I knew it was coming and others more sudden. It's intriguing how something so natural can become such a sensitive topic, but we are very emotional beings and this affects us in so many ways.

I don't mean to make much sense in this article, I merely attempt to express a fraction of the thoughts that are screaming inside my head.

When my wife told me I would be a father, I thought about death and the horrible pain that would be to lose a child. When my dad shared that he had cancer, it started to sink in my head that parents are not with us forever.

By far, loosing my dad has the hardest experience in my life, although we knew it would happen and I tried to emotionally prepare for it the best I could, you won't know how it feels until you get there.

My dad was a stand up dude, he was a true old-school gentleman. He had all the excuses to not become the great father that he was, since he never knew his own dad; yet, somehow God granted him the grace of an outstanding father. He was 100% dedicated to his family, engaged with every activity of his children at any stage of our lives.

They say, specially for men, that we must be the strongest person in our parents funeral. This is the moment when we are passed the torch they carried and its our turn to lead on the emotional path that we call mourning. Its when between the tears and sadness, there is also enough maturity to carry on with life and to live up to the legacy we were left with.

For most of the funerals I have attended, a weird feeling has been with me: the beautiful feeling of seeing so many familiar faces together in one place; my dad's funeral was no different.

To see all this people gathered to pay their respects, made me jump into the rabbit hole of how one person can touch so many lives and how many people can connect, along a lifetime span, to just one single person.

As I stood on the altar to speak about my dad's life, I saw a church filled with people from many different seasons of his life: school, work, church, family and more. While I took a few deep breaths before I dared to speak, I pondered over the amount of lives that were touched by my dad's kindness and way of treating people.

The odd mix of Death & Beauty carries with it tears and laughter. Tears to express how a part of our hearts has been ripped out by losing someone so close to us. Laughter and joy when replaying happy memories in our heads.

Godspeed

JF