funeral

Paint it black

2007-11-26T01:08:10+00:00

Loss came through tweets and emails, a drip of information at a time. First a note from a tech staffer saying that someone had died, with a pointer to more information, including the name.

I saw it at work, and I wondered who it would be, whose name had to take on a different status. Death is so final it seems that we should all be able to feel it when it happens, to know that something is missing that wasn't missing ten minutes ago. But it's not like that. We have to be told, and for me it was via email.

I didn't know Phil as well as many of my friends did, but his was a presence I enjoyed, and would not turn down if it was offered. Phil was memorable, flamboyant, outrageous; he earned his 'ink pad' nickname through an exploit at dragon*con that we still talk about today. Most of tech staff couldn't make it to Phil's funeral, but we decided to have the wake at Kim's the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday? Sure. Seemed oddly appropriate.

I will tell you this. We cried. It was easier to look around at the other people in the room through the lens of the camera, because the grief was there and palpable and rubbing raw at the throats of every person in the room, and the lens of a camera can sometimes provide the illusion of distance, while giving your nervous hands something to fidget with. I watched my friends in front of me hold each other as they cried while Crispy spoke, and I thought, how sad it is that we never find out how we're going to be remembered.

But we'll also remember Phil's wake as the night that Ogre proposed to his girlfriend:

...and silliness and camera-clowning we'll all probably regret when our grandchildren see these:

(Michelle via IM today: "Why are we all always grabbing each others' boobs? Were we all bottle fed or something?")

Life's like that. It's a blend of sorrow and magic, tears and joy, and all the mundane bullshit you go through with your friends on a yearly basis. I've felt so out of the loop over the past year as my day-to-day life has been eaten by my job, but this group is home in a way that no other place has ever been. We button our shirts and our lips and our opinions when we're on the clock, but this group of people sees the unfiltered version: glorious highs, warts, hangovers, and all.

I missed them so much it ached when I walked in the room and saw so many people there, and that made it worse to see them grieve so much.

But then the stories came, then the photos, and then the remembrance, and I realized that I want to stay a part of a group that can take a moment like the one on the left and turn it into the one on the right:

I stayed up until four a.m., curled up on the couch with a friend, talking, watching; one by one everyone left until it was just us, the glow of a computer monitor, a never-ending trance mix and a dying fire. Before I closed my eyes, I thought two things:

1) God, Chocobunny, please stop snoring and
2) Whenever my time comes, I want it to be like this.

(In fact, I wrote about that once. Instructions included in that 2005 entry.)

The full photoset can be found on flickr.

A blessing from the air

2002-03-23T04:09:30+00:00

I didn't expect to laugh today. I expected to cry. But maybe it was something in the weather that kept the tears away. Maybe something about the fact that my father died in the middle of one of the most enormous and long-lasting rainstorms in recent memory, but that today turned out to be one of those achingly clear and crisp early-spring days that Arkansas occasionally dishes up in March, that gave my heart a lift. But maybe, just maybe, it was something else entirely.

I knew that Andrew and Joy would be attending the funeral today. Since I am so far from home, I assumed that they would be my only friends at the service. Since I wasn't expecting anyone to come into the funeral home for my support, I placed my coat in the family room and went out front to shake hands and share hugs with the family members who had taken time out from their Friday afternoon to grieve with us.

The first person I spotted was Tara, she of the glasses and curly hair, a high school friend that I've never quite managed to lose touch with (despite our best attempts at sporadic contact!). I motioned for her to follow me out of the chapel to the entranceway, where we could talk in voices raised above a whisper.

It was there we stood, she and Jeff and I, as I turned around and greeted the cavalcade of great-aunts and other assorted relations who came streaming in.

At one point I spotted Rita, the wife of one of the men who was going to speak at the funeral, and I excused myself momentarily to step outside and ask her how her husband (a longtime friend of my father's) was holding up. It was then that I turned to my left and saw the face that absolutely made my heart stop. Rita must have wondered what in the world was going on with me, because I stopped mid-sentence and all but hurled myself into the arms of that old, old friend.

Monica.

Monica, whom I've known since I was fifteen, who saw me through that second broken arm; who was my roommate for a year and a half, and who shared every trial and upheaval that came with those collegiate years. Monica, whom I hadn't seen since the day of my wedding nearly four years ago. Monica, who lives in Texas and never breathed a word about her coming to Arkansas for Dad's funeral.

Her arrival was—oh, God, how do you say words like this and make them seem believable?—a blessing from the air, a shock, a surprise, possibly the only thing that could have made a day like this joyous.

How do I explain this? I don't think I can. Suffice it to say that she and Tara sat with Jeff and me in the secluded family room during the service today, and she followed us back to the house after the service ended. There we sat—Joy, Andrew, Tara, Monica, Jeff, and myself—our wagons circled in a far corner of the room, trading stories and, yes, laughing.

Laughing on a day that should have held no laughter.

We talked, literally, for hours. The relatives and the friends drifted off, one by one, and still we stayed there in the corner. Finally, Tara had to leave, and then Joy and Andrew, and then once again it was the same that it had always been, just she and I in a room, putting it all into words just as easily as it had always been those years ago when we were roommates.

Nearly four years it's been. Her father survived cancer. Mine did not. My sister remarried. Her brother did not. I've criss-crossed one continent and she two, and we've stayed married to the same quiet, steady fellows that we met in our college years.

When I barrelled toward her this afternoon I realized how much, how desperately, I have missed her—her wry laughter and her red hair, her practicality and her vast curiosity. Most of all, I missed just sitting and talking to her. Ever since we first met, we've had this odd, bizarre camaraderie that I've had with very few people.

It came back to me in a rush as she hugged me while I sniffled—the only time I did so today. I did not cry during the service. Nor during the interment. Me, mind you—the notorious bawler during funeral services.

Today, somehow, it just wasn't necessary.

One of my most frequent sayings is that each person is granted two families in life: the family they're born into, and the family they create by the people they choose to include in their daily life. I knew that today I would have my birth family.

I did not expect to have the second one, and somehow, it made all the difference.

Characterization: Wanda

2001-12-02T04:49:23+00:00

…so, anyway, Wanda looked at him with murder in her eyes and said—nothing.

It's funnier if you knew her, truly.
But if you know me, you know a little about her.I rarely write of my father's family; not because of lack of interest, but because of lack of knowledge. My father has several siblings, most of whom are still living, but whom I have not seen in years. Moving seven hours away virtually guarantees that you lose touch with many of the family figures that you counted as regulars among your childhood holiday celebrations.

Wanda is my father's second oldest living sister. Of his siblings, she is the one who lived nearest to us in my childhood years, and thus I knew her best. My father is nearing 60; through remembrance and a hint of guess, I believe Wanda to be near 70.

There are people whom you look at, at any age, and their sheer force of will makes you shake your head in surprise and astonishment. For me, Wanda has always been one of those people. I can only imagine the royal tyrant she must have been as a teenager; I only knew her as an adult, when she had polished her brassy, lovey, bossy image to a keen, sharp shine.

I don't have to wonder if she was a spitfire then. She is one now, and that answers my questions.

She married Sherwin, a man whose incredibly sharp intelligence and wit was matched only by his total relaxation in manner. In temperament they were complete and utter opposites: she blustering, outspoken; he patient, methodical. He was an accountant—and a geek. She made things work. He started the businesses they owned, but they never would have prospered without her.

Wanda had the same dark blond hair that my father had—in fact, the same hair I have now, minus the reddish tinge. As I grew up, her hair color faded, and she began to dye it—shades ranging from blond to red, depending on the year and her mood. I am round like her—we both would have breasts and hips in abundance, even if we were slender.

In my manner of fussing over visiting friends and family I see echoes of her, and realize that I picked up more of her traits than just her physical likeness.

Have I described a bossy, brassy, loving, fierce woman? She was all that, and more, and less, and everything in between. I remember sitting in her kitchen and talking with her as she washed dishes after a Thanksgiving dinner. I remember chasing the cats, playing with the computers (back in the 1980s, mind you, when computers were not quite the children's toys that they are today)—but most of all, I remember her kindness.

If I'm restricted to one story about Wanda (and Sherwin), I tell the story of the day of my grandfather's funeral.

Mind you, this was my mother's father, and Wanda is my father's sister. My grandfather was of no relation to Wanda and Sherwin, but they drove the hour and a half each way for the day of the funeral—"to help." Did she? I have no memory of what she did that day, but having known her since my childhood, I don't doubt that she did.

We buried my grandfather that day, and we grieved. In the Southern tradition, every relative within driving distance came to my grandmother's house and brought approximately sixteen tons of food. After everyone but immediate family (excluding Wanda and Sherwin) had left, we settled in at the kitchen table with some of the prepared food and finally, slowly, tiredly, began to eat.

We began to talk. It will probably not surprise you one bit to learn that most members of my family have a penchant for storytelling. Wanda and Sherwin easily qualify.

The stories went on. Sherwin took over the conversation, and began to tell dirty jokes, and suddenly we were all screaming with laughter. In a day that had had absolutely no levity whatsoever, we were sitting around a kitchen table, digging into casseroles and listening to dirty jokes and laughing so hard we could barely speak.

Sherwin began to take little digs at Wanda every few jokes; good-natured jabs that left her just seething, waiting for a chance to hurl a scathing comeback in his direction. My family—my grandmother, my extremely-pregnant sister, my parents, and my new boyfriend Jeff— sat, waiting to see how long it took her to get back at him. He knew it was coming. She knew it was coming. We knew it was coming.

We just wanted to see the fireworks.

Suddenly, Sherwin started talking about retirement, and what he planned to spend money on after he retired. Smoothly, without a grin or a wink, he started talking about Wanda, and how that, since she was turning 65 the next year, they could start living off of her Social Security income.

Up until that moment, I had never known Wanda's age. I switched my gaze over to her, just in time to see the deep, blotchy red begin to rise from her neckline to her hairline. Sherwin continued talking, and Wanda continued to turn redder and redder, and then Sherwin stopped what he was saying and smoothly murmured, "Oh, I'm sorry, dear, was I not supposed to tell them how old you are?"

We howled. Sherwin sat back in satisfaction, zinger delivered, and began to laugh. Then Wanda started laughing too: the look in her eyes read something like "I'll get you for this later, you brat."

We laughed—and it was good. Cathartic, gleeful. Tears of laughter, even. We resumed eating, and Wanda and Sherwin gave each other good-natured glares for the rest of the evening.

Few people have the love—or the necessary chutzpah—to come to a family gathering on the saddest of days and leave their family not grieving, but laughing.

One time recently, Dad said I reminded him of Wanda. I found myself thinking that there were few people in this world that I'd be happy to resemble. She's one of those few.