This Reddit User's Poem Beautifully Describes What Loss Can Feel Like

Everyone experiences funerals differently. Thoughts about death and loss are tricky to articulate. Read more below.

Funerals suck. In most cases, they are filled with darkness, crying and a heavy, deep sense of loss. It’s easy to get lost in your own thoughts as you sit there, looking around at the room. You think about the person who passed - your memories, the last time you saw them, the best times and the worst times. You think about yourself - your own, inevitable impending death, envisioning what your own funeral will be like. You think about all of the sadness, but you may also think about God, faith, and the role that it plays.

Whatever it is that you think about, the emotions are raw. When our team stumbled upon this reddit poem, we couldn’t help but feel like the honesty in this really sums up what goes through someone’s mind at a funeral.

I went to a friend's funeral today. She died of cancer. I wrote this.

Her hair is still brown and

She seems so frail and

Her face doesn’t look how I remember and

She’s dressed like Audrey Hepburn and

She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping and

Whoever came up with that saying is a fucking liar and

She looks like she’s dead and

She is.

I think of how I haven’t been inside a church in ten years

How long it’s been since I’ve heard hymns and

I feel my lips mouthing the words and

I’m surprised I still remember them and

I think about how much comfort religion brings to the people around me and

I think of how dangerous hope can be and

I think of how long it’d been since I’d seen her and

In a way I’m glad.

I remember her as she was in the good times and

That memory can’t be tarnished and

That memory can’t fade with time and

I hope it burns bright for all my life and

I think of how many of these I’ve been to lately and

I wonder if she ever asked about me.

I look down at my tie and

How the last time I wore it was at a wedding and

My best friend gave it to me and

How happy I hope he is and

How I don’t talk to him enough and

Yet I know we’re still like brothers and

I think of my own death and

I wonder where they’ll gather and

I hope they play the song I wanted and

I hope they share some stories and

I hope no Gods are involved.

At all.

People begin to exit and

I think of that one song

“How strange it is to be anything at all” and

I feel how tired I am and

I rest my head on your shoulder and

I close my eyes and

Wonder if it looks like I’m praying and

I wonder if maybe I am.

This poem was posted with permission of the author. Click here to read the original reddit post.