weave a little tale

My mom's funeral was yesterday.

It's been about two months after she died, after fighting pancreatic cancer for 1,5 years until she was wasted away into skeletal limbs, and witnessing all of it was so harrowing.

for the last 1,5 years i've grieved, i've cried, then and when she passed, but yesterday, despite thinking i've made progress in my grieving... nothing really prepared me to see her coffin.

it was like she wanted. a pretty white coffin, with white and green flowers laid on top of it.

it really felt like a punch in the stomach to see it.

i couldn't stop staring, i couldn't stop thinking that she's in there. My mom's in there, and she's really dead and i'll never see her again.

The service was nice. the priest was good.

My mom had picked every song and hymn that would play there.

i had tears streaming down my face the entire time.

After the songs and the priest's service, after all the guests had poured outside, me and my brother just couldn't leave yet. dad had already said his goodbyes, but we stayed by the coffin, and we patted the coffin and told her our farewells. told her how much we loved her and what a good mom she had been, how much she had tried her best with what she'd had.

it was so fucking hard to leave.

but... the whole thing was about closure too, i think. we honored her wishes. she can rest now, she's not in pain anymore. we needed to see this through, both for her sake, to follow her wishes, but for us, as well.

this was the last step. the rest is just... going one day at a time, living with it. someone once said, you'll grow around the grief and i think it's a fitting description.