On a Young Man's Funeral

I'm going to be honest here. This event has been sloshing around in my mind, begging for some sort of treatment ever since it happened, and I've found it extremely difficult to put it into words in a way that does it justice. It's difficult to really look at this scene and try to make something out of it without running the risk of belittling its significance and tragedy or becoming overly dramatic. With this in mind, I will cautiously convey to you a moment that has left a permanent impression in my mind and soul.
I've been to four funerals in my life, and only one funeral was for someone to whom I had no relation whatsoever. He was a young man (close to my age, give or take a year or two), and his father had long been friends with my father. He had hung himself, finally succumbing to the suffocating weight of depression after years of struggle.
I had never met the young man; I only knew his father by association with my own. I didn’t even view the body. But what reverberates with me to this day is the overwhelming sense of despair that permeated the air that day.
Most of the deaths in my family have been older people or those who lived dangerously. Losing them, while painful, was still something we were prepared to deal with at any moment.
This was a young man in his early twenties. It was something else completely.

There was an inconsolable mother. There was a father who, after years of trying to get closer to his son, suddenly saw it all vanish in one night. There were countless other friends and relatives who thought they’d see the young man again the next day, the next week, or at the next family get-together. Instead, they suddenly found themselves doubled over in infinite grief at the sight of his lifeless body. There was uncontrollable sobbing. There were expressionless stares that hid hearts crushed by one man’s decision to take his own life. There was a priest, standing before those closest to the deceased, delicately trying to convey to them that there was a real possibility that this boy could go to hell.

I witnessed the total collapse of the human spirit that day. All of its dignity, all of its grandeur, crushed like an ant beneath the formidable weight of despair.

I certainly shed tears during the funeral, but not entirely for the deceased. I also cried for his family and friends, who now and forever will have to carry with them the scars from young one man’s passionate act. This is knowledge that still haunts me on occasion.