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Fifty years ago, when I was a lad, I served as an altar boy at the funeral of the 8-year-old son of the local chief of police. The boy had been killed when he slipped from a snowbank into the path of a truck one week before Christmas.
The church was cold and dark, the small casket draped in black and the minister had been drinking. He droned his prayers, stumbling over words and tottering too close to the candles.
The chief, the biggest and strongest man in town, began to cry – not tears, but wrenching sobs that contorted his entire body. His wife, deathly white and frail, looked as if she would evaporate into a puff of smoke at any moment.
I have never attended a funeral since.
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