We are going to a funeral. A man I don’t know has died, but I do know his daughter, so we go.
A funeral home has a certain feeling. It is always there, and is native to the place. Everyone is quiet. Many stand to the side; those who aren’t related, and those who aren’t well acquainted with the deceased.
Everyone appears ready to leave. The men shift from foot to foot and the women keep their purses on their arms, not wanting to establish even a temporary residence in this place where the dead go in and out, in and out, in an unending cycle.
I hold my husband’s hand tightly as we search for the correct entrance. Finally, we go into a side door, into a chapel. It is the wrong door, of course, and a woman lies there, alone, in a pink coffin. I feel sorry for her, lying there with no company and no flowers around her. I get tears in my eyes.
A couple has followed us into the chapel, and my husband’s Southern upbringing requires us to allow them to step in front of us. They are very old, very gray, and they move very slowly. They hold hands tightly, and the wife seems to be in charge. He holds onto her arm as if he is drowning and she can save him. I whisper into my husband’s ear, “There we go, in a few years.”
A bystander might have taken my whisper as a joke, but I felt that tiny dread I sometimes feel when I see the future in front of me. We are not young ourselves.
We are not elderly, either, but the day will come when we will hold tightly to each other and dodder into funeral homes several times a year to look upon yet another friend or acquaintance that has done the thing that we hope we will never do.
Some people have no special talent. They can’t sing, or paint, or make big changes in the world. Many will never amount to anything other than what is ordinary. But, we all have this one thing that we can. and will, do.
It takes no talent, no special skills, to die, and yet we seem to hold a reverence for that person in the coffin. He has done something rather special. He was brave enough to take a leap into the unknown, something we can’t imagine doing.
We tell each other that he is in heaven, reaping his reward, sitting by the 
right hand of God, in perfect health once again.
I hold onto my husband’s hand and suddenly I can feel each of his precious fingers, and the pulse in our wrists beating against each other. I look at him, his hair needs a trim, and his shirt is wrinkled at the collar. How lucky we are, and how I wish we could be young, and in love, and alive, forever.
We leave the funeral home and get ice cream. It’s a comfort food, and we are both seeking a little bit of comfort. When we finish the ice cream, I wipe my husband’s mouth. He is so messy sometimes. Then, I kiss his lips.
