Between this world and that one

Today a high school friend of mine was laid to rest. Even typing these words seems odd to me. Brain cancer. 40 years young. Two young daughters and a spouse I have never met.

We are too young to die. This girl and I. Not moments ago we were in the halls of our high school, setting in the lunch room, me cracking jokes and she pretending to be offended. Now she is but a memory. Her children a legacy of all that she was, and passed on to them. A friend who is lost to her spouse.

I thought about her today. 2pm. The time of the funeral. I haven't seen her since high school but we are a small community, and everyone knows everyone and their families as well. It is a small part of you, your past, your being that is being buried with her. We are connected in that respect.

I could not be there. Instead, I found myself at a business expo, with booths and polished professionals and freebies and drinks and ... people going on with life and commerce and superficialness. While 90 miles away a solemn service was being held. A life being honored. An opportunity for grieving and supporting.

Two worlds at the same moment. This world and that one.

And I was caught between them somehow, contemplating the strangeness of it all.
I remember riding in the big black funeral home suburban following the vehicle that was carrying my mother to her grave and watching all of the traffic and people at the convenience stores and kids in their yards with balls and bicycles and I wanted to scream at them "Don't you know that the world has stopped!!!"
But they couldn't hear my inner thoughts - as their world had not. Mine had.

Two worlds at the same moment. This world and that one.

and I think, and I remember, and I smile, as somehow my memory of her still lingers, bridging the divide - between this world, and that one.