stream of consciousness about a funeral

a grief counselor told me that in the wild when elephants die and leave behind

when the grief lashes up against their huge bodies and wrecks them, they get close, as close as they can and they swarm up, huddle against each other

and the elephants say, in a way,

“if our bodies could act and bring the dead back we would purge the dead from the soil and keep them, but we cannot, so we will help and we will hold close and we will touch and we will heal ourselves”