It was a sunny early fall afternoon as I sailed east on the 401, occasionally passing areas with trees starting to turn into what will soon by a blaze of autumn colour. Even on a busy highway a certain quiet envelopes me inside the cab of my pickup. The time is mine to use for thought, forming ideas, contemplating.
As I passed Cobourg a cluster of people standing on an over pass catches my attention. They aren’t kids fooling around, they are adults, their attention apparently towards the east on the westbound side of the highway. A few kilometers on I met what they were waiting for, in the passage of but a few seconds we passed each other.
Westbound was a convoy of four hearses, 4 limos and 3 OPP cruisers, lights flashing providing escort for four fallen Canadians and their families. They’re home from their service in a far off land, only they wont be celebrating. Their families will somehow get through the days ahead, drawn together for now as they prepare for and get through the funerals to come. The celebrations of the lives now ended.
In the days that follow the funerals, each will start to settle back into their lives. There will be differences though, some will have the task of deciding what to do with the earthly possessions of their loved ones. Each in their own way will have adjustments to make, will need to remind themselves to speak of the person in the past tense, to remind themselves when they think of things they want to share with the person that those days are over. They will likely experience times when it seems their loved one is present. There will be other times when the pain of that loss will feel overwhelming.
Good grief lasts two years, bad grief a life time I was told years ago when my husband died. You can’t get around it, you have to go through it I was told recently.
My thoughts went briefly to a picture I looked at just a few days ago, a picture of a young man in 1943 taken with his comrades as they prepared to go overseas into another strange land to fight for this country. This young man came home in 1946, he met and married a woman, had a family, raised them through good times and bad. He lost his wife just six years back and at the end of July — some sixty years after he served his country — his family — my family, lost him.
We passed each other in but seconds, their young men will not have opportunity to experience what dad did. Our families will share the experiences of grieving those loses. The common denominator of death is we all will experience grief. Which is why we can feel so strongly for the loses of those four young men.
