Hey Reddit,

First and foremost I want to apologize ahead of time if this is a strange or weird question, I'm just really lost and beside myself.

I attend a local church where I would sometimes babysit toddlers while their parents attended service. In this time there was an elderly gentleman who I ended up becoming very close with. We even had an inside joke that we shared together each time we saw each other. I had met his wife as she had attended church with him until she unfortunately passed away a few years ago. Other than that I have not met his family as I know some lived in other parts of the country, and he lived alone.

He quickly became someone that I saw as a grandfather figure and I always told him that and he told me he felt honored. I had seen him outside of the church and we would exchange life stories. Once, he pulled out photo albums and told me stories and talked about his family when I was visiting his home.

Unfortunately he passed away this week and his funeral is tomorrow. I cannot imagine what his family must feel as I've honestly been a sobbing mess myself. We had a lot of good memories, but I'm not sure if his family even knows about me. The Church secretary told me a few days ago that he often talked about me and how he was proud of me. It's possible his family may know me but as I said I'm not sure.

Given our closeness and how much he meant to me, I had really hoped to talk to his family, on my condolences, and maybe share a memory or two.That being said, I'm very uncertain if I'll be able to pull myself together enough to really talk to them properly if at all. And it likely doesn't help that I lost my uncle within the last two weeks as well, so I have already been grieving. I had thought about perhaps writing a letter or note to get to them to sort of get these things across and just let them know the reason why and how wonderful he was.

Is this too weird?