Death is only a part of life

 How does one tribute the life of a person? Whenever somebody passes away, we find ourselves awkward, unable to know what to say or how to handle it. It's often said that people are uncomfortable because they don't know what to say, how to comfort. I think it's really because we are forced to question our own lives, and facing the fact that often we have our own interests at heart and no one elses. Personally, when someone I know has died, I find myself questioning whether I'm being indulgent in wanting to go to their funeral. Or whether I have a right to message that person and tell them I'm sorry.

 How do I look them in the eye and ask about what happened when I'm just thinking about my own conscience? I'm panicking about how I look to other people. Why they think I'm paying my respects. And knowing I'll ball my eyes out at any funeral is difficult. It looks like a literal 'cry for attention'. I start to think about my life, and what that person meant to me. And identifying the same relationship in my own life and re-evaluating it. 

 If it's someone you know well, or someone you felt responsible for, you find yourself thinking - what am I going to do with my life that acknowledge's the way they lived theirs?

 I wrote to my great uncle for around two years before he passed away this week. I haven't ever really had a wider family, we were very different to both sides. My grandmother, my great uncle's sister, who I tried once to contact, sent me a letter back telling me to have a nice life. So there's no affection there. But her brother, wrote to me and wanted to know everything.

 I used to write and tell him about what I was up to and he'd send me some fab type-written letter back about his past or his late wife, with some wicked jokes. I sent him a postcard from every country I visited. I sent him a silly christmas card with a cartoon of some camel's on the front, one of them had those goggly eyes that stick on, and across the top it read 'Oh Camel Ye Faithful'. He was a symbol of the family I had never known.

 He was very 'proud' of my writing and what I was doing. And now I wonder how do I remember his life when I knew him so little. He was pen and paper to me. Do I use his person in fiction? Some file saved on my computer... do I have the right to see his funeral? I don't know. I don't really know what's the least attention seeking thing I could do. Write a blog post?

 Isn't it funny what death does to us? It is a constant guarantee in life, it reoccurs to those we know well and those we know less. And we are none the wiser. Fascinating.