Sad times yes, mostly because one never appreciates a person enough during his being here.
Only when they are gone, does it become clear, just how important they where.
It was the first funeral I attended for someone close to me, or my family.
I'm by habit an observer (have always been) and was worried that that habit would make me appear distant or simply cold to others, as I have learned a long time ago, to hide my own emotions, due to the geographical impossibility to interact with my family.
But to my surprise, I got completely swept up in the moment, and the whole experience turned into a very important life-lesson, making me learn and understand some things that I have seen many times before, yet never completely grasped the magnitude of.
My biggest respect goes out for mother in law, 60 years of marriage through wars, insurrections, dictatorship, and a multitude of other personal problems, yet she turns out to be the one who always held this family together. Only now she revealed herself as the pillar of the whole family. After 60 years through good and bad, it is her, who took the heaviest loss, yet she remains the strongest of them all.
The house might have crumbled, yet the pillar stands
By the end of the day, this also lets me appreciate my wife's actions more, as I now know what lies behind them.