Smile!

Within the last month alone, we've lost quite a few celebrities including Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead and David Bowie.
We are told death is inevitable, and yet people fight so valiantly against it. We prolong our lives through natural and artificial means, the fountain of youth or eternal youth and other means to live forever make up the central themes to many stories. To people of the past, overcoming death was a godlike miracle in and of itself through the sheer force of beating the unbeatable. Orpheus, Heracules, Izanagi, Gilgamesh. These mythological heroes have defied death and were well known for it.

The reason I start the year with a rather bleak post is because I wanted to share one of the most touching things that's happened to me in some time.

Recently, my old boss's mother passed away after an extensive battle with what seemed to be every illness under the sun. Last Friday and Saturday were the services for the deceased and as a show of respect I at least went to the wake service. Mind you, despite growing up in the church and attending so many funerals I still have yet to find the secret to distancing myself so that I don't end up crying with the family.

I go to the funeral home a little later than expected, but with enough time to spare to pay my respects to the deceased, but also to her family. After turning from the urn of cremation, I walked right to her husband, my old boss's father. Him and I have a very close friendship from working together and etc.

Before I could say anything or even shed a single tear, he looked at me and uttered one word. One single word that made me rethink whatever I could have said at that moment.

"Smile!"

As I've mentioned before, I've been to numerous funerals, numbering easily above fifty. Every time those in attendance hear the same message. "Remember the good times and not -or- and the bad. That's what made them who they were." But in this very moment, that one word, smile, made me remember who exactly his wife was as a person.

In that very moment my feeling of sadness was swept away as he went on to tell me that after 2 hours, his legs and backside hurt. I couldn't help but smile myself then. A light went on in my head that gave me the sense that while my friend was sad over the loss, he still found reasons to smile.

I made my way down the family line to my old boss and his wife and, instead of trying to hold back sadness or recklessly extend my condolences, I smiled. Then my boss smiled, his wife smiled.

We all smiled at her, because...

She always smiled at us.