Changing Clothes

I was physically shaking when I approached my brother's casket. I was in the back of the procession. We were coming up through the church basement and I stopped in my tracks. My wife tried to gently pull me forward up the stairs and into the sanctuary. I just stood there and shook my head. I was terrified. I wouldn't move. After about thirty seconds I started walking again and we moved up out of the dark stairway into the narthax and then through the doors into the sanctuary. I could see my brother's body from a distance but as I neared the casket the strangest thing happened.

I felt relieved and a little confused. The body in the casket looked nothing like my brother did in life. It was ludicrous. I smirked. I looked around as if to say, "Who is this in my brother's casket?" For sure, there was some resemblance to the man I knew and love and certainly it had to be his body, but without his spirit, the thing that is Dan and that will always be Dan, it was simply a form. I was relived because I knew that my brother was not there anymore.

At the cemetery I was not sad when they lowered the casket into the ground(I could barely stand I was so sick) because I knew that my brother was not in that box. I had seen his form, the thing that housed him for 25 years, but I could not see him. No matter how hard I stared, no matter how long I looked at that body I could not see him and I was relieved because I knew he had gone.