And so it’s done.

Ed was buried today in a farmer’s funeral after a deeply religious and moving ceremony under a tent in the warm sun. After the ceremony, his casket was placed in a horse drawn cart and ridden to the old town ceremony where the Gulley family has 14 plots.

The family and friends and relatives walked behind the carriage to the ceremony.

The ceremony was timeless and iconic, when I closed my eyes, I could easily have believed I was taken back in time to a farm pasture in Iowa or Kansas. There was a sea of grizzled,wrinkled, tanned and weather faces in the crowd, scores more standing behind the tent.

There were easily 300 people there, Ed was a big man, he lived large and touched the lives and hears of an awful lot of people.

I was privileged to read a hopefully humorous and appreciative eulogy that I had written on the blog earlier in the week. Ed’s family and friends  gave talks, played music, a Mennonite chorale sang six religious hymns.

I wasn’t planning to go to the funeral, but the family asked me to, and of course I should have gone.  I am so glad I went.

I think I just needed to make sure they wanted me there, I am very much something of an outsider and the farm culture is very clannish. There are not a lot of people like me up here, and I often feel that I live far outside of the circle.

You never know when a stranger with a camera and odd ways is intruding. Ed was one of the very few farmers I ever met who got what a blog was and started one with Carol.

The ceremony was nearly two hours long, and Maria and I did not go to the cemetery. We were both just spent. I just kept thinking, I have had enough, I have had enough. She drew sketches through the service, she is an artist everywhere she goes.

My focus is shifting. I would love to be of help to Carol and her family, to whom i believe I have become permanently attached. I want to give up writing about death a bit of a break on my blog, and get on with writing about life. People are making me itchy  by coming up to me with long sad faces as if I had hours to live or lost a best friend.

Those sad faces are not comforting to me.

Well, I guess I did lose a best friend, but I am not in mourning about it, nor would Ed have wanted me to.  I just feel down.

I felt Ed’s loss acutely at the ceremony today, I think it hit me as the casket was lifted up onto the horse carriage that I would not be seeing him again. And I will miss him, he was, at the end, an enormous presence in my life.

I will have to work it out.

Everyone else at the service talked of seeing Ed again in heaven, but my belief system is different, I think my time with Ed is done, except for memory and the way in which he lives on in his very special family. That makes it final and sorrowful for me, I went up to kiss the casket via my lips to my fingers to the casket. I said goodbye, and thanks for being such a good friend to me, for supporting my life and letting me into his.

I have this feeling I will not have a friendship like that again in this world.

I can’t even guess where Carol and the children got their strength today.

Their Sunday started with a pre-service calling line, then the service, then the ride and march to the cemetery, then a celebration of Ed’s life with food. I hope they get some time for peace and rest, between Ed’s sickness and death and the planning for what was a large funeral, they must be physically and spiritually exhausted.

We have invited Carol to come over for dinner this week, she says she would love to come. We mean to stay close to her.

I am spent, I will have to lie down with some music (Mary Lattimore, Hundreds Of Days).

I would like to write about Ed one more time tonight, when I get past some of the sorrow and loss I feel right now. Thanks for sharing this journey with me. It was important.