The Journey Is the Meaning

The Journey Is the Meaning

By Ollie

Today was my nan’s funeral.

It was a day I’d been expecting for a while. Her passing wasn’t sudden—she’d been ill for quite some time, and we knew it was coming. I even had the chance to say goodbye. Despite her health struggles, she lived into her 80s. I’d already experienced loss before, when my aunt died, but this day still felt heavy in its own way.

The service was, in truth, lovely. The sun was shining, and my family were in good spirits. We shared laughs, told stories, and reconnected. For a funeral, it went as well as it could. Yet something about sitting inches from her coffin—close enough to touch—has stayed with me.

My nan and I weren’t especially close. There was no bad blood, just distance. I have a large family, and some of her other grandchildren lived nearer. Even so, I’m certain we loved each other in our own way. That distance made it easier for me to process her death and focus on supporting my family.

Still, watching that small coffin come into the church and rest on the podium was surreal. During the prayers, I kept thinking about what lay inside. She was gone, yet her memory lived on—in my grandad, in her children, in me. I thought about what she had left behind.

To the wider world, my nan may not have seemed remarkable. She wasn’t a rocket scientist or a philanthropist. But like many women of her generation, she did the best she could with what she had. She married, raised children, worked hard. She laughed, loved, lived. And now her story was complete—like closing the final page of a book.

I’ve always been scared of dying. The perfectionist in me hates the thought of running out of time with dreams unfulfilled or words unsaid. It’s easier to imagine life as a video game with endless restarts and cheat codes. But real life is finite, and as I get older, I see how quickly time passes and how plans often get derailed.

Thinking about my nan, I don’t believe she left much undone. She lived the life she wanted, whether that meant raising a family or buying endless scratch cards—her little trademark. I often wondered what she’d do if she ever won big. Probably just buy more scratch cards.

Sitting there in the church, I found myself searching for a lesson in all this. Maybe the takeaway isn’t in the coffin at all, but in the people who filled that room—her family, her legacy. She may not have been a showgirl or an astronaut, but she touched everyone there. People laughed when the priest made a joke, cried when they saw her coffin, and remembered her in their own ways.

We spend so much time searching for meaning and purpose, not realising we’re already living it. The journey is the meaning—learning, failing, existing. There’s no guidebook because you make the answers as you go.

I’ll miss my nan in my own way. Consciously or not, she helped shape me. I choose not to dwell on what she missed, but on what she didn’t—my first steps, holidays together, quiet afternoons in her conservatory. I can still picture her there, cup of tea by her side, scratching away at a card, the afternoon sun spilling in. Maybe all of it was for a reason.

So here’s what I’ll leave you with: don’t be afraid of death—it’s as swift as birth, and it comes for us all. Be afraid not to live. Not to take the job, book the trip, or go on the date. The destination is the same for everyone, but the journey is yours alone. So take life by the horns and live it.

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