There's something poetic about people drawing together for a funeral. Something about how family and friends converge on a location and how everyone joins together to support each other through sorrow and grief. I feel like it goes against my nature not to see a similar but opposite/positive image in weddings, in the collective celebration, but I don't. Maybe because you don't need support to be joyful. At a funeral, you mourn and remember together. Maybe I just keep picturing the end of Big Fish where all the characters from the stories show up, and together they seem to create a picture of a life, a life that is now complete. It's beautiful but it's also awful because it serves as a reminder of how wonderful the life was, how many other lives it touched, and how much of a void its absence will leave behind.

We spent New Years Eve converging on Winston-Salem, NC, for my uncle's funeral. He was 55 years old and died after a two-year fight with cancer of the lung and brain that eventually spread to his pancreas. His funeral was standing-room only. He was a good man.