As I looked about the church, I noticed a former love of my youth and recalled retreat from my initial impression. I looked forward with some hesitation to some later inevitable conversation between us.

I thought of others about whom I had also been quite mistaken: some by positive first impression, others by discovery of time how my negative early pictures of them would be just plain wrong.

As I stared emptily into the high trusses and the stained glass, I recalled: ‘The end of all being is the happiness of man.’

(I think it was from Voltaire or someone like that, from a philosophy class I had nearly failed in college.)

Then I remembered one lover who had said to me, “I’m not happy.” And then it was over.

I also thought of a time when I was confronted with a similar situation by a dear friend saying, “I have no reason to live.”

And I guess that if the reason for man’s existence is happiness, then it could possibly be true. But I had begged my friend at the time to allow me to drive there to talk, and not to do anything rash before I could get there. It would take me almost two hours on dark roads to drive to this place where I had never been.

But reminiscing about these loved ones from days past was not the reason we were here. And I pulled in my attention to the cross at the front of the church.

—
Someone said something about Heaven… then my mind really started wandering.

I looked around the church for some helpful pictures, but thought more of a strange picture from yesterday.

I guess that if you look around at all of the different kinds of churches with their different kinds of cemeteries, you see some oddities of how we think about occasions like this.

Last night was one of those odd sorts of occasions that display the incongruous thinking of some of our customs. This particular place and custom had always been dutifully performed in our family with fear and in trepidation

– the formal visit to the funeral home, for the showing of the body.