Personal Topic- Life After Death...Among the Living

On Christmas morning, I experienced death for the first time. An old family friend, Mr. Jones, had passed in his sleep while staying at my family's house for the holidays. That day was the hardest day I've had to come to terms with because of the situation and close to four months after, there is not a day that goes by that I don't think of the scene I woke up to. I remember Mr. Jones as the man he was when he was alive, but also the man I found lifeless.
For the first time since his funeral in December, I made my way to where he rests to leave some flowers on his grave. As I was walking through the cemetery, I saw all the graves either had flowers or no flowers. And a sad reality hit me, this is where life comes to end...a few words on a granite stone and some fake flowers. Life has went on without those people by the scene of the littered cemetery.
When I finally got to where Mr. Jones rests, my sadness was gone. For that moment I realized that his life didn't end there with the words on the granite stone and the fake flowers. His life after death was the life in me. It's the life in my memories of him and the valuable life lessons he taught me. The shell of the man I admired lays there in the cemetery, but his love, his mind, and his soul lives on in every one he meant so much to.