I always cry at funerals.

This morning, I attended a Mass of Christian Burial for Anne Realyea, my wife's best friend's mother. She passed away Monday morning after a 14 year battle with breast caner. I never knew her.

This was the fourth funeral I have been to in as many years for someone I did not know personally. Last December, it was my wife's first cousin, George Morin, who died from AIDS. He lived in Seattle, we never met. Just over two years ago I went to the funeral for Justin Ryan Mumley, my co-workers son, who died in a motorcycle accident. He was 18 years old and about to start his Senior year of High School. I never met him, and I barely knew his mother. In 2004, at the age of 96, my wife's great-great-Uncle Albert Verret died of... well... being 96. I met him a couple of times, but I don't think we spent more than 2 hours in the same room.

At all of these funerals, I cried. I suffered no personal loss when these people passed away, but they were all close to someone I knew. It's kind of like watching someone fall headfirst down a flight of stairs, you can't help but wince at the pain they must feel, even thought the pain is not actually real to you.

Anne's funeral took place at Holy Cross Church in Colchester. The altar platform there is large, and the pews are right up next to it, so there is not a lot of room for a casket at the front without lifting it up onto the altar platform, and caskets are heavy. When they brought Anne in, they placed her in the center aisle between the first 3 or 4 rows of pews - but when the time came for communion, she was in the way. Two guys from the funeral home very discreetly wheeled Anne off to one side so people could get by to receive the sacrement, then just wheeled her back to the center when everyone had retaken their seats.

I don't think anybody else noticed that this had happened, but these guys took the person who this was supposed to be the focus of all this ceremony, and just moved her out of the way like a piece of furniture. And really, that's all that was in that box, just an inanimate object, no more alive than that recliner you've had since college that you left out by the curb with a "Free" sign taped to it.

I'm sure you've all heard this before, and much more eloquently, but when someone dies, the body that's left behind isn't really them at all. We bury bodies, or burn them, or both, and surround that event with much pomp and ceremony but for all the difference it makes to the body, we may as well throw it in the trash like last weeks meatloaf - because that's all that's there, old meat, to be disposed of quickly before it starts to stink.

So I'm having all of these cheery thoughts about dead bodies and old meatloaf, and I start thinking about what it is that's really going in at a funeral - what are we really hoping to accomplish. I think in on sense, it's about cauterizing the wound - that person we love is gone, and the whole wake, funeral, burial process forces us to confront that in very direct way. It doesn't heal the wounds, but it seals them - they still hurt but they are no longer bleeding. We can leave the body behind, and go on with our lives.

Cauterizing the wound is part of it, but as the funeral winds down, I realized that it's really all about pulling yourself closer to the loved ones you have left. You hug people at funerals that you would never hug in other settings. I gave Anne's daughter Jess, Ann's daughter, a hug on the way out. I hugged her at my wedding, but that was one of those polite, lean in, hands on the back hugs - the kind you might give an aunt you only see every few years. This was a big, sustained squeezing hug - the kind that says "we're still here. we're still alive. we're still connected to each other, we can still grab each other and squeeze hard".

It seems to me that is what this funeral business is all about, affirming and strengthening our connections with each other. If somebody asks you "Who are you?", there's a lot of answers you can give. If somebody had asked me that at the funeral, I would have said I'm Anne's Daughter's best friend's husband - which is nothing more than a string of relationships. The other parents at daycare know me as simply Alex's Dad. All of the asnwers to that "Who Am I" question I can come up with seem to just describe my relationship with other people.

Maybe because that's all we really are. Maybe we are nothing more than what our interaction with other people makes us. None of us would have been here without a relationship between two people. Most everything we know, we learn by imitating our caregivers as children. Throughout our lives we shape ourselves based on our interactions with others. Maybe there really is no self without those relationships. If it weren't for all of you out there, talking to me, reacting to me, reading my blog, I wouldn't exist at all.

And maybe that's why the death of a loved one is so painful - there's a piece of yourself that isn't there anymore, it's pain on the order of having a your hand cut off - a part of you has been literally ripped away. And maybe that's why we have funerals and wakes. That's why we hug each other and why we always seem to share a meal - or at least some finger foods - after funerals. We cling to the pieces of ourselves that we find in each other, and we try to pull them close, and make them stronger. Like an amputee strengthening his remaining limbs to compensate for the missing ones, we pull each other closer to make up for what we are suddenly lacking.

If I'm right about all of this, there really is something about Anne that never really died. Anne had her own business, she was a real estate appriaser. Her daughter Jess started her own business, too, and I'm sure it was Anne's influence that inspired her to do that. She has since sold her shares, but not before teaching half a dozen other women all about it My wife had lunch with 6 women who were working together to run their own business, because of what Anne passed down to Jess. Anne was very close with her 10 year old granddaughter Kelsea, and had I known Anne I am sure I could pick out several things about Kelsey that come from Anne alone. Had I stayed longer or wandered to all the tables, I'm sure I would find more examples - more little pieces of Anne that are still here.

So maybe that's what we're doing with all the hugging and food sharing. Maybe when the people who have been influenced by the deceased pull together and strengthen their bonds, the pieces of our loved one that are in all of us are strengthened also.

Or maybe I've been thinking about this too long and I should just go to bed.

The only thing I know for sure is that when it's my time to go, I want an open bar at my funeral. Keep that in mind if you're in a position to to something about it when the time comes.

Rest In Peace Anne Realyea.