(Im)Mortality

I went to a funeral yesterday. My best friend's mother died last week after a long and brave fight against the dreaded cancer. It's one of those inevitabilities that you hope will remain in the distant future well, forever really, but of course, it doesn't - the death of parents.

At the funeral I realised that we're at that age and I completely freaked. I don't want to be at the age where I'm suddenly going to my friend's parent's funerals and, god forbid, my own parents.These are the people who watched us grow, saw us through our adolescent tempestuosness (with us rolling our eyes and them shaking their heads) and then welcomed us to the 'adult' dinner table, becoming our friends. They know our history. They are our history.

My best friend flew from Sydney for the funeral, her tummy beautifully swollen with her second baby, which will join us in October, and who kicked and wriggled with life at the funeral. She, of course, is heartbroken. The funeral was as good as funerals can be, a mixture of sadness and laughter. Her mum was a lively woman, with a wicked sense of humour, right up to the end.

After the funeral we all gathered at one of her brother's houses and celebrated her. Wine flowed (they're Irish), food was consumed, stories were shared and the sun came out after four days of grey, miserable, weather. It all seemed fitting.

I came home and organised to meet my parents for dinner having realised (again) how lucky I am to live down the road from them and still be able to make that shared history with them. I've never been a fan of funerals, I'm bad at them, and I especially don't like it when they make it patently obvious that I'm the wrong side of 35 and can no longer rely on teen- or twenty-something delusions of immortality.