Isn’t it funny that we use “funny” as another way to say “odd” or “what you said wasn’t humorous but I have nothing else to say.”

Death isn’t humorous, but when you lose someone it causes the human mind and body to react separate from one another.

We as humans effected by the death of others write about it.

A close friend of mine lost a loved one recently and while at the visitation I couldn’t help trying to mentally take notes on the way people interacted with the tragedy of what the body in the casket left behind.

Three children. The oldest, a boy of sixteen, sat in the second pew alone most of the time. Staring forward, dry eyes, and a million pitying glances trying to catch them.

As man after man walked by him and shook the boy’s hand I imagined each was an acknowledgment of a new man who would replace the one lost.

I wondered why tears never fall when everyone expects them to. I thought how a funeral was not reality until months down the road when you forget they died and call them.

Death of a father when you’re sixteen means you learn “none of this matters” before you were supposed to.

So, as writers we see these realities and we write about them. I’m coming to realize I think it’s funny that we choose to relive death in order to explain what happens to us when someone we love dies.

But why else would we write, but in order to explore what we don’t understand?