The mall just opened a few minutes ago, so it's not too busy. And it wasn't hard for me to find an empty seat and table.

I set up my laptop, put on my noise-cancelling headphones (because the mall will get noisy soon enough), and get to work.

The headphones do a decent job of blocking most noise, but some things come through, like the person saying, "Good morning!" to my left.

I look over and see an elderly couple, both of them using walkers. The woman is leaning towards me, a smile beaming on her wrinkled face, her fist extended towards me in the classic fist-bump pose. I've seen her before, so I'm not too surprised.

I reach out and gently tap my fist against hers. "Have a good day!" she says. I can almost feel the warmth of her smile. 

“You too,” I say.

She and her husband (friend? brother?) continue on their way, moving at a steady pace. In a few minutes they're out of sight around the corner.

I could do my work at home, at my comfortable desk. But sometimes I can feel the walls closing in, just a bit, and I crave a change of scenery. And maybe a random fist bump.

I was 10 years old when I attended my first funeral, and heard one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard in my entire life.

The neighbours next to the house I was living in at the time were a nice family, and we chatted with them often. There was a mother, father, and two teens, brother and sister. And a dog, curly-haired, friendly, but also somewhat smelly. Every time I petted the dog, the smell would linger on my fingers and I'd have to go wash my hands immediately.

One day we heard tragic new: the teenage son had been killed in a car accident. I don't know the details of the accident, but it wasn't important anyway. What was important was that our friendly neighbours, our friends, were grieving, and they had invited us to the funeral service.

It was held in a church—I don't remember which one—and, since it was my first ever funeral and I was a child, I was deeply uncomfortable, not knowing what to do or how to behave. 

I remember walking around the church, trying to understand what was happening, my hands awkwardly thrust into my pockets. My older brother whispered something—hissed, actually—with an angry expression on his face, but I couldn't make out what he said. He repeated it, then again, with zero comprehension on my part, and then finally I got it: "Take your hands out of your pockets!" I quickly complied, having now learned that one should not put their hands in their pockets at a funeral. Apparently.

The service started, and we sat through solemn words shared by family and friends of the neighbours, none of whom I knew. There might have been prayers, too, appropriate for a church, but I don't remember them.

What I do remember is the part where the priest announced, "Now we'd like to play some music, one of his favourite songs." And the music started. And I was lost.

It was instrumental music, an orchestra, and the song was led by a single instrument—an oboe, I learned much later—as it soared high, up into the sky, into heaven itself, it seemed, perhaps guiding the soul of the teenager who had left the world and left his family friends far too soon. The music swept me away, and I was left in awe that something so beautiful could exist in this world.

The song was called "Gabriel's Oboe" from the soundtrack to The Mission, and it was composed by Ennio Morricone. I've gone on to explore other pieces of music written by this incredibly talented composer, including the hauntingly heart-stirring soundtrack of Cinema Paradiso, but I don't know if any other music can ever lift me up out beyond the boundaries of my mind like that song did, a moment of glorious, shining beauty in the middle of sadness and grief. 
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