Still Senseless

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." - Pericles

I went to the visitation today for Iris. There were a lot of people there. I still didn't know any real details of what happened. Somehow I hoped getting some information would help me make sense of it all. I know I'm not alone in that as more than 200 people visited this blog in just a couple of days after I wrote the last post about Iris.

I realized today how little I really knew about her. We've probably only seen one another a half dozen times. It is Stephen who has been my friend for these many years and I don't see him often. We have lunch and get caught up a couple of times a year. I didn't know, for example, that Iris was an artist. Stephen brought some of her paintings, carvings and sculptures to the visitation today. She was incredibly gifted. I didn't know, until I read her obituary in the paper, that she was a Christmas baby and that she would have turned 50 on Christmas day this year. I didn't want to ask what the cause of her death was, but I listened to Stephen tell someone else that Iris died of a pulmonary embolism.

The tone of the visitation was different than what I expected. Family members all seemed quite composed. They are all probably still numb and pretty cried out by now. There was a slide show playing on a large screen and there were lots of wonderful pictures of Iris with her family. Her art graced the tables. It was sad but not the abyss of despair I was dreading. As it should have been, it was more of a celebration of the life of a special woman.

So now I have some information. I got a chance to hug Stephen and their sons. I know how Iris died. And yet, the very early loss of Iris Schmidt in the prime of her days still doesn't make one whit of sense to me.