and so it is.

So they say, "death is the great equalizer." I would submit that death is many things. It is the humiliator, the weapon of choice, and the rattifier.

Death does nothing beyond the obvious of remove a human from an earthly form, however those worlds that we suppress and reject take on lifelike proportions in the wake of a death (pun intended). The worlds of emotions and womanness meet with a confused state of anger at the natural order and we are basically spun, like clay on a spinning wheel, into something far from human - something, even, alien.

When I say this, I am getting at our lack of instinctive behavior, or perhaps our lack of pre-planned behaviors. Either way, we do not have the same tact and sensitivity in normal occurences.

Now, I've mentioned death being the great equalizer, which it is. Once, we all die, there are no A-Rod's, no Osama's; simply put, we are all dead. Once human, no longer - dead folks. There is no social heirarchy or anything of the sort. This is humbling. Now here is where the two worlds, living and the dead, collide.

Just as there is no arrogance in death, similarly there is no arrogance in another's death. At this point, we have come to grips with our own mortality that we are no longer so self serving and others-effacing. Point in case, funeral processions.

The whole reason I wrote this is that I want to demonstrate why it is that I love funeral processions. Funeral processions are a beautiful thing. No, not because it is the orchestration of one human passing through the realm, into an eternal existance. It is because the procession is a demonstration of reverence for others. The people all drive down the road one after the other, and they have flags to denote the "funeral procession" cars. Never once, have I seen a funeral procession car, pass another one. Never once, have I seen a person in a funeral procession upset at their positition in the order of the procession.

Also, all oncoming cars pull over in unison to pay homage to the deceased. They stay stopped until the procession is passed and then continue. It is as though for a split second, everyone in the world put aside their pride, put aside their desire to be honored, put aside their me-first attitude and forgot that they were in a hurry. They simply drove in solitude and virtue to pay their respects to a deceased friend. And in some roundabout way, the simple act of a funeral procession seems to do just that - pay respect to human life.