it's just death knocking

I've been thinking about death a lot recently.

My route for work has me passing by no less than 4 funeral homes. The past week I've seen 3 funeral processions alone.

Car after car, parking on the side of the street with orange flags on the antennae.  

FUNERAL in black bold font across the seemingly harmless orange. As if it were shouting at you to look at the faces of those inside.

Find the grief written on them, can you see it? Is it in the lines on their faces? The smiles as they greet those they know?

Where is their guilt? Their heavy hearts should be sinking inside their chests, forming a black hole to engulf their world.

Everyone processes loss differently and at their own speed. Maybe laughing and smiling is what gets us through the hard parts, until we're ready for them.

I've been lucky enough in my life to experience very little personal loss. I have a grandmother that died when I was around 12, and that is my only experience with true loss of someone close to your heart.

She used to teach me out to craft. She'd get a small bowl and put cloves in it, give me an unpeeled orange, and a small metal object with a point on one end. I'd stare at her, not knowing what she wanted me to do. She'd show me the steps, and soon we had an air freshener. 

She was a magician to my small eyes and even smaller world.

When I got the news she had died, we all knew it was a matter of time. Cancer was eating her alive. Once so strong she withered away. I watched her hands become skeletal and her face lose it's plump liveliness.

She gave me an angel figurine weeks before she died. I still have her. I keep her where my eyes can always see her.

I shrugged off the loss. I cried it out, and never processed it. Death is something natural, it's going through a closed door onto another adventure.

I can't say what I believe in, or what I know for certain that this life is all about. I'm working that out every day.

How can you measure the worth of your own life? Everyone says this life is a short one, so make every day count. But count to who? You? Myself? Is there a book I haven't read yet that gives me a scale of moments that you can then tally up?

I often feel like a failure. I'm a professional quitter. I have moments where I do it all, and moments where I don't do anything. Ups, and downs. Others have run cricles around me in life, leaving me to look at their tracks and wonder what I'm doing wrong. Or if I'm doing it wrong.

I want to wake up tomorrow and not feel indifferent about walking down a path. I want to have the passion that others have in one subject long enough to let me chase it.

But I don't know if I ever will.

Maybe a little soul searching is in order, to see if I even have one.