Transitions

     Three weeks ago, I tossed a handful of dirt into my friend’s grave. His casket had just been lowered into the hole. The gesture was my final goodbye. Our friendship had lasted since boyhood.
     Since that burial, I’ve attended a wake and a funeral for two other people. Tomorrow morning I’ll attend yet another burial.
     Contemplating so much death in such a brief span of time is depressing. A pall of gloom hangs over my head.
     Earlier in the year, before this wave of deaths, I walked by a cemetery. A cluster of balloons floated through it. The sight was unusual. Balloons announce celebrations. Those harbingers of joy share nothing in common with a location that stands for death.
     Or so I thought.
     I noticed words on one of the balloons and moved close to read them. The words congratulated a graduate. Chances were, a family had thrown a backyard party for a high school senior. The balloons had flown from the party into the cemetery.
     The balloon photo offers me perspective in my mourning. The key word here is transition. The balloons were transitioning across a neighborhood, the graduate was transitioning from high school to college, and my late friend was undergoing the most mind blowing transition of them all.
     When someone undergoes a transition—a new job, a new home, death, marriage, divorce, and so forth—the effect is profound on the individual.
     But it’s not only the individual that is affected. A transition affects more than the person undergoing the change. When someone transitions, a ripple effect is felt by people close to him.
     Transitions are potent.