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wrap-up
thank you all for your support, kind thoughts, etc. in the loss of my aunt. it's been very much appreciated. in particular, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
datlowen made me smile last monday with "since you have hugs coming out of your arse", and deftly deflected the most annoying man alive from trying to be my friend when i had a Moment at curling friday night; jgesteve kept me laughing through the whole eight-end match; and darthrami took good care of me when i got back and didn't have anything to take my mind off it any more.
the funeral was friday morning. my uncle hugged me for longer than he ever has before -- poor guy, i've never known him to be very demonstrative -- but he and my cousins said they were (and seemed to be) doing okay, all things considered. my father and his brother (who have also buried both their parents in the past ten years, before their time) also held up well. my brother doesn't cry much, but he was somber and didn't say much, which i guess is how he deals. my mother was weepy, but trying to be strong. it's harder for me to hear her voice crack than my father's, i think. i wonder why that is. my aunt -- my father's brother's wife -- was a total mess.
also in attendance, among the family and friends, were four of my father's cousins, two from each side, and my grandmother's younger sister and brother. seeing them caused me to break up all over again each time i thought i'd managed to pull myself together. ever since i was a little girl, when the fact of my baby brother crying made me cry (and drove away at least one young babysitter who couldn't handle both of us at once), i've had a hard time with other people in tears. and coming in to the church and seeing my father's aunt and uncle ... there's a particular kind of expression you see on the faces of people who outlive their grown children. you can see it in queen mary's eyes in this picture from the funeral of george vi, and it's a detail i've always particularly admired in four weddings and a funeral. and i saw it on their faces on friday; they hadn't survived their own children, but they'd survived one of their sister's children, and that was bad enough.
related note: open casket. what's that all about? i couldn't go. i was in the second row from the back for the brief service-thing at the funeral home before we went to the church, and i only realized the casket was open when i caught a glimpse between people's shoulders in front of me. i had to look away. when we were invited up -- to, as they said, pay our final respects -- i freaked out. quietly, but it was freaking out all the same. my mother went up, and my brother and his fiancee went up, and my father and i went out the side entrance. good lord. there must be some logic behind it, but why in the world would you want your last memory of a person to be of the dead body lying there waiting to be buried? it's not peaceful; it's gruesome. she didn't look like she was sleeping. she looked still and grey and dead. even her hair looked dull and awful. the brief moment i saw her was enough for me to see all that -- i couldn't go closer and engrave that image more firmly on my memory (and i don't understand how on earth my cousins sat there looking at their mother and didn't go bananas), and what's more i don't think she'd especially have wanted me to. this was a woman who couldn't go with the rabbi before her own mother's funeral and confirm that the body in the casket was in fact the right one. none of them could do it; my mother was the one who went. so i can't think of it as disrespectful to my aunt to refrain from approaching her casket and getting a clear look at her corpse -- god, just the idea makes me shake -- as a means of paying my last respects to her. (and for that matter, i don't think that respect should be final; the fact that she's gone doesn't mean she's no longer worthy of respect.)
had a long nap this evening, so it'll be tough for me to get to sleep tonight. but i must, because i have a lot of work to do tomorrow to get back in the swing of things. assignment due monday; papers to read for a meeting on monday; statement of purpose, which i've been intending to write for weeks; should make some progress on at least one of the three major papers i have to write in the next month; papers to grade and lesson plans to make for monday and tuesday, which i especially have to do because last week i bagged it. sigh.
datlowen made me smile last monday with "since you have hugs coming out of your arse", and deftly deflected the most annoying man alive from trying to be my friend when i had a Moment at curling friday night; jgesteve kept me laughing through the whole eight-end match; and darthrami took good care of me when i got back and didn't have anything to take my mind off it any more.the funeral was friday morning. my uncle hugged me for longer than he ever has before -- poor guy, i've never known him to be very demonstrative -- but he and my cousins said they were (and seemed to be) doing okay, all things considered. my father and his brother (who have also buried both their parents in the past ten years, before their time) also held up well. my brother doesn't cry much, but he was somber and didn't say much, which i guess is how he deals. my mother was weepy, but trying to be strong. it's harder for me to hear her voice crack than my father's, i think. i wonder why that is. my aunt -- my father's brother's wife -- was a total mess.
also in attendance, among the family and friends, were four of my father's cousins, two from each side, and my grandmother's younger sister and brother. seeing them caused me to break up all over again each time i thought i'd managed to pull myself together. ever since i was a little girl, when the fact of my baby brother crying made me cry (and drove away at least one young babysitter who couldn't handle both of us at once), i've had a hard time with other people in tears. and coming in to the church and seeing my father's aunt and uncle ... there's a particular kind of expression you see on the faces of people who outlive their grown children. you can see it in queen mary's eyes in this picture from the funeral of george vi, and it's a detail i've always particularly admired in four weddings and a funeral. and i saw it on their faces on friday; they hadn't survived their own children, but they'd survived one of their sister's children, and that was bad enough.
related note: open casket. what's that all about? i couldn't go. i was in the second row from the back for the brief service-thing at the funeral home before we went to the church, and i only realized the casket was open when i caught a glimpse between people's shoulders in front of me. i had to look away. when we were invited up -- to, as they said, pay our final respects -- i freaked out. quietly, but it was freaking out all the same. my mother went up, and my brother and his fiancee went up, and my father and i went out the side entrance. good lord. there must be some logic behind it, but why in the world would you want your last memory of a person to be of the dead body lying there waiting to be buried? it's not peaceful; it's gruesome. she didn't look like she was sleeping. she looked still and grey and dead. even her hair looked dull and awful. the brief moment i saw her was enough for me to see all that -- i couldn't go closer and engrave that image more firmly on my memory (and i don't understand how on earth my cousins sat there looking at their mother and didn't go bananas), and what's more i don't think she'd especially have wanted me to. this was a woman who couldn't go with the rabbi before her own mother's funeral and confirm that the body in the casket was in fact the right one. none of them could do it; my mother was the one who went. so i can't think of it as disrespectful to my aunt to refrain from approaching her casket and getting a clear look at her corpse -- god, just the idea makes me shake -- as a means of paying my last respects to her. (and for that matter, i don't think that respect should be final; the fact that she's gone doesn't mean she's no longer worthy of respect.)
had a long nap this evening, so it'll be tough for me to get to sleep tonight. but i must, because i have a lot of work to do tomorrow to get back in the swing of things. assignment due monday; papers to read for a meeting on monday; statement of purpose, which i've been intending to write for weeks; should make some progress on at least one of the three major papers i have to write in the next month; papers to grade and lesson plans to make for monday and tuesday, which i especially have to do because last week i bagged it. sigh.
no subject
I was as fine with the open casket thing as I was with the funeral thing at all for my grandfather. I mean, I wasn't happy about approaching the casket but, well, he actually looked better dead than he had looked two months earlier and if I have to have one of those images stuck in my head, I'd actually rather have the dead one. (It's really strange how people feel they have to comment on the good craftsmanship.) But I guess that just tells you how bad things got in the last few months, not how good it is to look into an open casket. But what really bothered me? My grandfather died of lung cancer. The man smoked himself to death. My cousin went out during the wake, bought a cigar, and put it in the casket (in his jacket pocket) because Grandpa would have wanted to be buried with some of the things he loved, she reasoned. That was too much. But we all just sort of let her do it, which I guess was the right thing to do but it didn't feel right.
I guess what I'm saying is we all have different ways....
When my great-grandmother died, my father told me in no uncertain terms that I didn't have time to come home in the middle of the semester for her funeral. That was harder. And it will never happen again. I hope. I fear being on another continent when someone goes....
More hugs!