Shadowknight

This has, without a doubt, been the most difficult week of my life. I've barely slept or eaten since Saturday, flown between Fort Worth and San Antonio twice, driven down to San Antonio once, and I still had to do a final and a paper in the midst of everything that's been happening. Here's the story.
Saturday night, around 1 AM, I got a phone call from a good friend of mine, a guy who I've known since I was about 8. He was calling because my lifelong best friend, who I'd been inseparable from since we were 2, had passed away in his sleep the previous night. I'd left the bedroom to take that call, and I couldn't quite make it back before my legs quit working, so my wife, who was woken up by my commotion, had to come get me out of the hallway. She called my parents, who also hadn't heard, and they bought me a plane ticket for the next morning. I got maybe an hour of sleep. I came down, spent time with friends, my family, and my friend's family, and they treated me like one of their own. I'm not an emotional person usually, but this was like something had been unexpectedly cut out of me, like I'd just lost a brother. I stayed with them all day, and I flew back home on Monday night because I had a final on Tuesday. It was terrible, but I feel like I did well. I drove back down on Wednesday morning (about 4 hours) and my wife flew after she got off work, and we went to the visitation that night.
I was terrified going into that funeral home. I'd never been to an open casket visitation before, and I certainly wasn't prepared to do so for my best friend, but I was surprisingly more troubled by the slideshow of pictures outside than by the body, probably because it didn't really look like him. The pictures reminded me of the 20 years we'd spent together in a way that his body could not.
I decided on Wednesday, before the visitation, to agree to co-officiate the funeral service and to lead the graveside service myself. This got complicated, as I was also a pallbearer, but it seemed like the best thing I could do for his family. I was worried about this going in because my body had been continuously rebelling since Saturday: I had a constant headache, it felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach, and I absolutely could not stop shaking. But when I led the family into the sanctuary, when I walked onto the chancel, when I read the eulogy at the lectern, when I led the family out and carried the casket down to the hearse, and even when I stood by my friend's grave, I knew that this was how I could help everyone. This was the only part of my grieving process I'd been trained for, and it was the part that I knew about already. 
My words helped the family, they helped his friends, and they helped me. I cried the entire time I was writing them, because I process emotions best through words, but when I was in front of everyone, serving as a pastor and a friend, I was comforted by the understanding that this was one of the most important things I had ever done. Maybe the most important. And when I was standing by the grave, with his closest friends and his family, my words flowed without hesitation or waver, and I was able to speak loudly without worry. This was, after all, what I was called to do.
So I co-officiated my first funeral yesterday, and it was for my best friend. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and one of the most important.