Love Songs and Stained Glass

"Every time you hear a love song, imagine that I wrote every word for you."

I heard these words on monday, while seated in a beautiful church room lined with bright stained-glass windows. These were the words that his father had said to his mother on their 25th anniversary, and they were the ones he had chosen for his closing remarks at his father's funeral service.  These were my neighbors, who lived just two houses down and across the street from us.  I'd never been particularly close to them, (actually I've harbored suspicions that they secretly disliked me when we were younger), but I have a lot of respect for their family.  The three sons were extremely strong in the face of their father's death, and kept up warm and friendly conversation during the wake.  I marveled at how I could barely open my mouth without bursting into tears, but they were able to smile and personally chat up every single person that showed up.  And their mom was just as strong.  Thanking everyone and relating all of the last moments of his life. A couple of stories from the wake particularly touched me, but first some background information.  He was only 56, and seemed perfectly healthy until around the beginning of fall.  His brain tumor grew quickly and before a year was up, he was gone.  Now for the stories:

At the wake we got to talk to the youngest of the brothers for a little while (he's a senior like me, but goes to a different school). He told us about how his dad waited for him to go on his school trip to london before letting himself get really sick.  And then he waited for him to come home last wednesday before passing away early thursday morning.  He also talked about how his dad got to watch his dreams come true when he got accepted to his top choice college and got to play guitar on stage at some famous concert hall.  Then we were speaking to his wife, and she told us about how she decided to take a nap early in the morning for an hour on thursday.  In the dream, a man came and took her husband to go somewhere.  She immediately started protesting, but the man consoled her and said not to worry, that he was going to a good place.  So she let him go, and immediately woke up to find that he had passed. Aren't those stories crazy? They're things I'd expect to see in a movie or read in a book.  Anyway, I'm too socially awkward to provide them with any sort of verbal consolation, so I'm planning on painting them a giant painting.  I'll start it in the coming weeks, but I'm not sure when it's going to be done. :\ We'll see. But anyway, RIP to a great man that I had the honor of knowing, but wish I had known better.