After the Wake

I don't remember many of the details of funerals of my childhood, but I do remember hanging out with all my cousins, playing cards, and chasing each other through house. We kids might might cry upon seeing the dead, or afterwards at night, but the sheer exuberance of youth would not allow us to remain sad when so many cousins were around. It was that way this weekend at the funeral of the father of a friend, a respected 70 year old doctor killed in an instant by a drunk 20 year old driver. The brother of the doctor said this, "As I get older I realize more and more that the constant in these family gatherings, the thing that cements them in memory, is sound of of the kids voices and the rumble of their feet tearing through house. I look around this room and I can see almost everyone here as one of those kids. I remember when my brother and I were those kids... it doesn't seem that long ago."