My ice cream freezer died.  My wonderful, White Mountain, can-churn-anything-until-it’s-hard-as-a-brick-bat, came-over-on-the-Mayflower ice cream freezer died.  The motor simply couldn’t turn the dasher anymore.  It just sat there making an awful racket.  So I ordered another one.

The arrival of the new freezer happened to coincide with the arrival of our three grandchildren for a three day, two night visit.  What better time to take the new freezer for a test drive?  So I put together my homemade chocolate ice cream mix and froze it in my brand new, didn’t-sound-like-a-freight-train-in-the-kitchen ice cream freezer.  Then Wilson had some (and seconds) and Anderson had some and Cora had some.  And I had far more than any mere mortal should consume at one time—and then licked the dasher (and yes, I washed it with scalding hot water afterwards).  But since it’s a six quart freezer (for the measurement conversion-challenged, that’s a gallon and a half) there was a significant amount of ice cream remaining at my house once the kids departed.

This left me with a quandary.  It was too good to throw away and too much for one or two people to eat quickly, so this temptation was going to be lurking in my home until such time as I managed to inhale every last bite.  If you’re wondering why my husband couldn’t help with this task, he’s diabetic so ice cream is kind of a no-no . . . and my daughter isn’t fond of it because it’s so cold.  For the good of everyone else involved, this was a mission that was all mine to complete.  I finally came to the conclusion that I should just consume as much as possible at each sitting so it would disappear faster so I could get back to behaving myself, nutritionally speaking.

That probably wasn’t the best approach, given that I still needed my clothes to fit without feeling like I ate a gallon of ice cream at one time . . . or maybe two or three or four times.  But sometimes, for whatever misguided reason, we think faster is better—and this was one of those times.

Now, there are instances when faster really is better, like when removing a bandage.  If you slowly . . . gently . . . carefully pull it off, you just prolong the agony.  But if you give it one good yank, the pain will be intense for about a second—more or less—and then you’re done.  Unfortunately, dealing with Death falls more under the leftover chocolate ice cream category than the bandage scenario.

You can hurry through the process of burying the dead—at a family’s request we’ve managed to bury someone less than 24 hours after taking the death call—but that’s not an approach we’d ever recommend.  Granted, there are times when speed is required due to family illnesses or obligations that simply cannot be rescheduled.  But most of the time, when a family chooses to move at the speed of light, it’s because they mistakenly believe it won’t hurt as much.  They can get the funeral over with and go back to life as they knew it and everything will return to normal.  They don’t understand that life will never again be as they knew it and no matter how much they wish for the old normal, they will have to create a new one.  When important pieces go missing, the puzzle can never be the same.

As emotionally and mentally painful as grief is, the process of acknowledging a loss and honoring a life is designed to help rather than harm.  It gives friends and extended family members the opportunity to share in the loss while offering comfort and support.  It allows everyone to reflect on the life that was lived and the importance of that person to them.  And it provides a safe setting where tears and laughter can combine without reservation or fear of condemnation.  Will it hurt?  Oh yes.  Will it make it not ever hurt again?  Oh no.  But it will allow the healing process to begin.  After all, a deep wound can never heal when you don’t take the time needed to care for it.

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