When I was young, after two or so funerals, I began to imagine the brief and structured funeral as a type of gift. A mercy placed upon someone who lived a life and now got to, perhaps, see whatever awaited on the other side of that life. I imagined the entire process of the funeral being quick as a service to the dead—to spare them being stuck here with our grief, and instead send them to the waiting arms of some heaven-like interior. Some endless sky where they sit and wait for everyone they’ve ever loved to join them, where the years feel like the mere passing of minutes.
