Detroit Free Press

I went to a funeral this past week. My friend's mom. She was a sweet woman who never came to your house empty-handed, who always had a smile and who couldn't help but ask me, in private, if her son, my friend, was ever going to get married.At the funeral service, and later, at the home, I saw photo albums of her when she was younger and her son was a boy, which meant I was a boy, too. And I got a little misty. I realized there are all these categories of people in our lives: parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, friends, colleagues.