In loving memory

I went to a visitation to a friend of the family's today. They had been battling cancer for a while, but the last news that we had heard was that he was doing pretty well. We then learned that they had called hospice.
A couple days later I was told that he had died.
Yes, I was sad, but not that heart wrenching feeling that one gets. It didn't quite sink in.

I am the type of person to where it takes a while for things to sink in.  Especially death.  It doesn't sink in till the visitation when you see the person who is left behind, the one who wonders how they're going to go on, the one who is no longer one with someone. 

When you see it through that person's eyes. 
To see a person you love in pain.

How does one deal with this?
What do you say to the line of people who are related to that person that died? 
It'll be alright?  Well, yeah...
I'm here for ya?  Some how that just doesn't sound that comforting to me...
They're in a better place?  But what if they aren't?  What more the grief is.
I'm sorry?

Frankly, I didn't really know the people in the line.  I knew and was trying to get to the person on the end of the line that had been left behind. 

And the look in her eyes...

The look of they aren't crying, but you can see that they have been, and are crying on the inside...

Thats when it sunk in.  Thats when that gut wrenching pain and tears happened. 

I'm afraid I didn't give any words of comfort but going and letting her know that we love her and that well, we'd be thinking of her-
Some things can't be expressed in words.  Sometimes all you can do is give them a hug and listen.