Last weekend, my mom flew back home for the funeral of my great-uncle. My mom has a huge extended family- my grandma is one of four and each of her siblings had at least 5 kids. So my mom has quite a few cousins, and in turn her cousins have kids (and now grandkids). Despite this, they are all close and we are in turn close with them. All of this to say, it's a large family but being a second cousin or whatever doesn't hold much. My grand-uncle was as much an uncle. He died due to cancer, and it was quick but unexpected.
So the funeral was huge. He was a teacher for decades, so there were students and former colleagues. He and my aunt did mission work; they'd fly to countries and do repair/building work. No real proselytizing, just a "here we're going to fix your house" sort of thing. So there were people from those groups who came. All of my mom's cousins were there as well as many of my cousins. I guess he knew the end was near because he had pretty much planned his funeral, so people spoke. The church was so full, they had to flow into a basement and set up a video feed.
Anyways, I was sad. He was such a friendly and happy guy. It always sticks out to me about how much he and my aunt truly loved each other.
This morning, a video was posted that was a slideshow of pictures. I watched it and I am in tears. So many pictures there of him, his kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. Pictures of my great-grandparents (who I miss dearly and my great-grandpa was the reason I got into doing research in the first place). Pictures of my grandparents with them. The worst was that part of it was set to a song of one of his great-grandkids singing.
I'm in tears, I knew I would be. But man, fuck cancer. He was older, his time was going to come sooner or later. But I wish it didn't have to be like this.