Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/301854
72 going through the motions but not really believing what was hap- pening anywhere around me at all. I had so many thoughts running through my head but none of them made any sense. There I am looking at my parents, my children, at my husband and the hundreds of people in attendance and I remember I just couldn't register what was really happening. There was still, how- ever, an unexplainable comfort inside me. I felt it. I couldn't have begun to explain it then, and I can hardly identify with it now, but I remember it was there. It was the only thing keeping me going. It wasn't until after the funeral when so many people who had come in from out of town were saying good-bye that I no longer felt that comfort I had felt. I felt like I had just said good-bye to my Bryant and it was so real at that moment. I didn't want to leave him but, again, someone who was just trying to help dragged me away. I don't know where my fighter spirit had gone but I had no energy to argue and I was so depressed I couldn't resist anyone telling me what to do. I call myself strong-willed but I was nothing more than a shell of person by then. I couldn't muster a fight inside and what remnant of life I had left felt like it was leaking out of my pores. Back at Pam's, Megan realized it was her birthday. She had actually forgotten that it was her birthday and so had I. We never discussed it until a year later, but my best friend's birthday will forever be on the anniversary of the burial of my son Bryant.