You Never Know When It’ll Be Your Turn in the Front Row

I don’t like funerals. I never have and I probably never will. So when one of my Mother’s friends died I was caught between a rock and a hard place. On the day that my Mother’s friend passed away she called me crying. I hated hearing my Mother cry, but I knew she needed me in that moment so I listened and provided words of encouragement in hopes of putting her mind at ease.

A few days after my Mother called me with the news of her friend passing, she asked me if I would attend the funeral with her. My first thought was no. Why, because I don’t like funerals, and my Mother knew I didn’t like them. After much thought, I decided to attend the funeral with her and she ended up teaching me a valuable lesson. She said “You never know when it’s going to be your turn to sit in the front row, so show up for people in the way you would want them to show up for you.” So I did.

I showed up to my Mother’s friends funeral but I did not go and view the body. I remember being in the church and being able to see the body from where I sat. I tried not to look, but it was hard for me to look away. As my Mother went to view her friend one last time, I found myself being unsettled but I didn’t understand why.

As the funeral started, I was unprepared for the grief that my Mother’s friends sons were experiencing. I knew both of them but I was closer in age to the youngest one. He appeared to be destroyed and my heart immediately broke for him.

His Mother, like mine, was his everything. I remember watching his face as he tried to hide his tears and I remember not being able to imagine that type of pain. It scared me. While I was sitting next to my Mother, he was viewing his for the last time.

Little did I know, I too, would soon experience the very thing I couldn’t bring myself to imagine. I, too, would be sitting in the front row of my own Mother’s funeral, trying to hide my tears as everyone else watched.