Friend’s funeral

hello dear, miss you 🤍

Today was my friend’s funeral, it felt like a lot happened in one day. I hope you don’t mind that I use this blog to journal and share about this day.

I shared here before that this friend and I belong to the same friend group at the church I used to go to and grew up going. We served at Sunday school together for many years, but I am actually the youngest in that group, the rest like him and Vienna are like your age, so they are more like big brothers and sisters to me who “watched” me grow since I was in primary school till university, before some of us started going to another church (the one I’m going now).

I knew this is the day when we would gather to mourn, but I didn’t expect to have this strange feeling when I saw so many familiar faces from my old church that I haven’t seen for so long, except today, they are all with a really sorrowful face.

As we commemorated him during the funeral, it brought back a lot of memories I had growing up with this group of friends and him.

I grew up struggling a lot at church, because I was always under pressure from my parents to be a “good girl” and serve in different musical roles on stage, even when I sometimes really hated it. Not a lot of people at church would understand my frustration because I would hide it all to maintain my “good girl” image. But this group of friends understood my circumstances, because most of them had similar background, they were also brought by their parents to go to church since small.

So they were a little bit like you for me when we were at Meyer but it was the 15-20 year-old me. I would run to them immediately to rant and complain whenever I had any trouble. Interestingly similar to you, their ways to ease my stress was to make it “light” for me. I still remember they used to laugh at how I would put on a grumpy “west” face whenever I played violin on stage (haha). And I would end up laughing together when they described me that way.

The truth is, our bonding is no longer that close these days as we all enter different life stages (a lot of them are married or even have children). But today at the funeral, as these memory came back, I felt very thankful that God put this group of people in my life to walk alongside me at my 15 to 20s. They were the first group of people in my life that showed me how to be cheerful despite the hard times.

I was very scared to attend the funeral today because I worried that I would feel really triggered when I saw how heartbroken his wife and brother (who are also in our same group) are. And I also shared about how burdened I felt when I see my friends like Vienna being sad and cried about the loss. I was also nervous that in that place, I would not be able to keep it together and might shed some tears too.

But as the funeral service went on today, I felt like God spoke to me in my heart that, the best way to walk with someone who is mourning is to mourn with them. That’s how true relationships in life should be: to cry together, mourn together, laugh together, celebrate together. And this occasion today is meant for grieving. It is totally okay to cry and there is no better time to cry together at that moment. So in the end I allowed myself to shed some tears throughout the funeral :’)

Turns out it certainly made me feel better to cry it out at that moment than keeping it within myself, though I felt I still had a lot of emotions inside me after I got home from the funeral. So I spent most of the afternoon crying and letting my emotions out. It felt tiring but I know I will feel better soon.

Miss you a lot today, Andy. want to hug you really tightly on a day like this and never let go. 🫂 Goodnight 🤍

Here is me today after the funeral: