Going to a soldier's funeral

Some of my favorite things to work with photographically are interesting shapes, and reflective surfaces. My morning assignment in the Mukilteo lighthouse even had interesting people to photograph, so it should have been a dream assignment for me. But I could not enjoy it, because my mind was thinking about the funeral I was going to photograph in the afternoon.
Like most photojournalists I believe it is important to cover sad events like funerals. Because in covering the funeral of a child or a war-hero we are honoring the tragic loss by allowing the community to share the family's anguish. I hope when I cover memorial's for teens killed while driving that maybe it will make someone take an extra few seconds to think before they act, and when covering a soldier's death I hope that someone might remember the cost of freedom and be encouraged to use their freedom for good. I think all of that, and I repeat it to myself a thousand times in the course of one funeral, because no matter how often I tell myself the truth, the other truth is that I feel very strange photographing in a funeral. Instead of being hidden in a pew with a note pad, I stand out with a conspicuously large lens. I'm usually at the back of the room, or on the sidelines, but I keep thinking that half the people in the room are looking at me. Thinking to themselves, "what a jerk, how can that camera guy photograph the pain people are in." I can't read minds, and maybe it is better that way, because if I could, I might actually hear those very words. So I hope someone reading this blog entry may think more kindly of the journalists who are required to cover funerals and tragic events, because in the end covering funerals is all about hope for the future.