Losing someone who you love—whether it is a friend, family member, or just someone who had a significant presence in your life— is never easy. You have everyone asking you how you are, and you try and keep it together, but really you just want to climb into bed and never come out. Eventually it gets easier to talk about things and you feel like you are getting back to normal. But every once and a while you find one of their old sweaters, or their favorite movie comes on, and you have to start the process all over again before you can go on.

Recently, I suffered the loss of my grandfather, and the whole family came together to grieve. Several of my family members came and many other friends whom I couldn’t recognize. My sister and I would whisper and ask each other who everyone was, only to find out neither of us knew and we had to check the guestbook to figure it out.

I had friends come to show their support and have a moment to express their own sadness. I had a friend who after ten minutes left to go buy me and my sister, mother, and grandmother snacks. We had been there for only an hour but we were starving; it was going to be a long night and we would have to deal with a lot of people. There are so many people that you have to deal with at funerals, and most of them are not ones that you want to handle.

You have the hordes of people who comment about how grown up you look, and how the last time they saw you “you only came up to here!” They talk about the deceased and the memories that they shared, and you nod and smile along while you desperately hunt your brain for their name as you try and figure out who they are.

There are the people who you recognize and you know their name but you’re not sure why. They come over and give you a hug, ask you how you are for the one hundredth time. You say, “I’m okay,” or something along those lines, because that’s easier than repeating the truth over and over.

You have the family members who you love and cling to as you make laps around the room, touching elbows and shoulders as you smile sadly. They help to keep you sane and laughing through the hard times. My cousins always manage to get me to laugh. I saw my sister high five our older cousin as they laughed, then laughed even harder as they pondered if a funeral was an appropriate place to high five.

You meet people who you haven’t seen for what feels like forever and you get to talking and the time slips by. You catch up on families, and what each of you has been doing. You start to make plans on getting together and complain how it’s been too long. Then you remember the reason for being reunited and the mood dips.

Then there are the people who you see but you know for a fact that the deceased did not like them. You talk to them out of respect and comfort them when they say how sad they are, while inside you’re laughing and confused, telling yourself, “If you only knew.”

After a while, you wonder if the stream of people who walk through the door will ever end. I jokingly talked with my friend and asked her, “Why did he have to be so damn likeable?” The number of visitors who came to calling hours was a true testament to the amazing man who was and always will be Doug Adams.