Around 4:00 Mom wanted to go back to the cemetery. It had already been a long day, with Daddy’s funeral in the chapel followed by a graveside service and quiet conversations with cousins we wouldn’t see again until the next funeral. We had gone home tired. But Mom wanted to go back, so we went.
It was September 4, and it seemed like everything was over. It was late in the day and late in the week. Summer was gone. Even the floral arrangements heaped on the grave site just a few hours earlier had begun to wilt.
But there was a bee among those flowers. I watched it for a while, crawling over the roses and lilies looking for pollen. For me, the day was about loss. For the bee, life went on.
That’s when I understood. We say it many ways: the circle of life, sunrise/sunset, for everything there is a season. We love, we lose, we mourn; and we carry love and grief with us, compounded as the water of our tears, as we go on.