Outside the funeral home

It's strange, the way one can take a seemingly mundane thing and twist it in their minds to create an elaborate life story. They make their own characters and plot at such an alarming speed, that the reality and plausibility of the story becomes malleable. It usually becomes something that is not truthfully, true. It's almost as if we're using objects, or people, that we see and find peculiar, and take advantage of their disposition, if objects could have disposition.

I feel guilty, or nearly so, as I've been doing this quite frequently lately. It's as though, when something normal, strikes me as incredibly odd, it suddenly becomes rounded. I feel obliged to let my mind wander into the realm of endless possibilities that the situation I have just witnessed, may exist within. The situation doesn't have to be extremely out of the ordinary, just a passing interest. It's happened to me on many occasions, and I feel as though I should've written more examples down, however I do have one to provide.

Not a week ago, I saw funeral procession about to leave the parlors, a melancholy sight to even the hardest of hearts. It was not the black and mourning procession itself that intrigued me though, it was a man crossing the drive up to the parlor. He had dropped his book bag and spilled it's contents onto the sidewalk. He had a look of utter despair on his face, as if nothing else could have gone wrong in his life that day. The weather was perfect, the place and timing seemed to be in line for me to create some story about this man and his spilled things.

I analyzed the situation for a brief moment, and realized he must not have had a particularly good day, and might not have even been aware of the funeral taking place. However, it seemed as though he felt the same loss, the same sense of distress that the people in the parlor felt. It was a relative sense of course, as a few spilled things could never compare to a life, however I knew that, given the right place, tears might have been shed by this man for yet another thing falling out of place that evening. I felt for him, as I felt for the ones who'd lost their loved one. It was as though they shared the depressing atmosphere.

This made me of course wonder on death itself, as though it emanated that desperation. Maybe that man dropped his bag outside of that funeral for a reason. Perhaps it was the dead within the home trying to push their bad karma on others, trying to purge themselves through allowing each living being to suffer just slightly. This could account for the tears shed as well. If this is the case, I would feel selfish not to have taken part in the small dropping of things. I would have felt guilty had I not seen the tearful procession and the funeral home. Yes, I've concluded that that was my purpose. I was to view the situation as an aid to the dead, trying to help them overcome the terrible things that they'd see in the afterlife be imparting just a small part of their burden on myself.

I realize this is all mostly nonsense, that the man probably just dropped his bag, and that processions cry, because it's a sad thing to lose a life. But because the two groups present at that time and event, both felt such despair (even though they were only relative to situations), perhaps there is more to emotion than we truly know. Perhaps