The Counting-Downers Read Free Page B

sociopathic tendencies if they didn’t feel even a hint of sympathy when they heard about the tragic passing of a good person.
    But you know the ones I mean; those who had every opportunity to become genuine mourners had they taken the chance to get to know and spend time with the deceased while they were still breathing.
    The type who learn more about a person they saw every day at their funeral, knowing them infinitely better dead than alive.
    You’d think these people would feel guilty. They would realize the shame and regret in opportunities missed and chances lost to make a friend. But they feel grief, not guilt. Genuine over-the-top, all-consuming grief.
    I don’t understand it. I can’t bear the hypocrisy that comes with death. Just be honest, for goodness sake.
    Grief for family and friends, sadness for acquaintances, sympathy for strangers, ambivalence and relief for enemies.
    As in life, so in death. You can’t befriend the dead, and you can’t rewrite history. But still, they try.
    Looking around at all of these people who have come to see the sun set on my father’s life, I wonder about the ratio of false to genuine grievers here today.
    The length of time you know someone doesn’t make your grief more valid than somebody else’s. You can meet someone once and leave such a life-changing impact on them that they will never forget you. Or you can work side-by-side with someone every day for years and they’ll struggle to remember your name.
    My father was the sort of person you only needed to meet once to be changed for good.
    I think, in a way, each of us leave pieces of ourselves with the people we know and love, like we’re all composed of a million-piece jigsaw puzzle and we give one bit or more to everyone we meet.
    Some of these people have pieces of my father that I never will. They knew him as the guy who had a dirty sense of humor, the heartbreaking womanizer in his college days, or the naughty little boy next door who smashed their windows with a football.
    But I have pieces they don’t. I knew the guy who gave amazing cuddles and made even better pancakes. The one who taught me with patience to read, and ride, and swim, and love, and live . I will always hold pieces of the man who comforted me after my first heartbreak, and taught me to go with the flow.
    If we all came together, you’d see the whole picture. But maybe that’s not the point.
    All of us are, and mean, different things to different people. We’re one person, but a million people. Fractured, but whole. All giving out puzzle pieces and carrying around a bag full of the ones given to us by everyone we’ve ever met.
    I read once that the Japanese believe you have three faces: The first, you show to the world. The second, to your close friends and family. The third, you never show anyone and it’s the truest reflection of yourself.
    I think a lot of truth lies in that. For as many puzzle pieces as everyone here today holds of my father, there will always be some missing. Secrets of his self, he’s taken to the grave.
    We knew a lot about him, but we never knew all.
    I zone back into reality as the minister shouts over the wind about God having a plan for each of us. “Erik Evans was taken too soon,” he says, “but even though we may not understand it, we need to trust that it was God’s plan for him.”
    That doesn’t even make sense. He can’t have been taken too soon. If it was ‘God’s Plan,’ it figures that he was taken right on time.
    From the moment he was born, his dismayed parents and the hospital staff saw the clock start ticking down from 46 years, 2 months, 18 days, 25 hours, and 2 seconds.
    On March 14, 2016, that time ran out without a second to spare.
    Say what you want about death, but at least it’s punctual.
    Sitting to the right of me, my Norwegian grandmother, or Farmor , Ingrid holds my spare hand for dear life. Life is dear indeed.
    At sixty-five, my paternal grandmother still has 19 years, 8