Church?! What?! Part 1

So things are still rough in patches when it comes to Meg's passing and little things still trigger deep feelings that will always be there for our little monkey. In this case, the new Ray Lamontagne album has a song that fits almost word-for-feeling how Emily and I have felt after Meg died, despite the song apparently being about a break-up. Well, here it is:

For a while I sat there staring at her photograph
For a while I cried and tried not to make a scene
There was a time when we were young
I used to make her laugh
But life is long, my love has gone away from me

Gone away from me
Gone away from me
Life is long, my love has gone away from me
Gone away from me
Gone away from me
Life is long, my love has gone away from me

Lately I can't seem to find myself no sleep at all
Lately I just lie awake and hear and dream
Of the time when she was mine
Felt like I had it all
But life is long, my love has gone away from me

Gone away from me
Gone away from me
Life is long, my love has gone away from me
Gone away from me
Gone away from me
Life is long, my love has gone away from me

Yesterday is gone
Yesterday is dead
Get it through your head and walk away
Yesterday is gone
Ain't no use hanging on to her memory
It only causes you pain

For a while I sat there staring at her photograph
For a while I cried and tried not to make a scene
There was a time when we were young
I used to make her laugh
But life is long, my love has gone away from me

Gone away from me
Gone away from me
Life is long, my love has gone away from me
Gone away from me
Gone away from me
Life is long, my love has gone away from me

So, as one might guess, it stirred up all of the thoughts about life, the universe, and everything and instead of accepting 43 as the answer, Emily, alone in the house looked for what Gibran's "The Prophet" would say that might sort some of this all out. For some reason, I had chosen that day to take it with me to work to read and Emily ended up picking "The Wisdom of Buddha" up from the shelf. Within she found words on the belief that animals have an afterlife and it spoke to her enough for her to talk to me about checking out Buddhism. When I got home we talked more about Buddhist philosophy and after chatting about beliefs in general decided to try the beliefnet survey again. Both of us scored really high on "Unitarian Universalist" so we thought, "Why not?" and headed out to church on Sunday for the first time I have of my own accord and Emily had since a young girl.

It was interesting... more to come...