Funerals and Memorials, pt. 1
The whole point of having a blog, and even after dumping all the material into a single silo? Make it searchable. Alas, it was not meant to be.
“She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word”
There is a laugh I have with my Sister, every time we have funeral arrangements to attend. Doesn’t matter where or when, what comes up, we refer back to my maternal grandfather as he was lay clergy of note, a retired engineer, and his funerary was met with our dark, twisted hilarity.
My sister caught the last flight in from CA, think she was Oakland at the time, and I grabbed her at the airport, and we shared tears and laughter on the hour-long ride into the funeral home. This was before cell phones and all I had was a beeper.
Beepers weren’t much good at GPS directions.
We thought, it seemed rational, that it would be the same place my grandmother was buried, just a half-dozen years before. Late in the spring Texas twilight, very few mourners hanging about except for staff, we asked at the counter, they pointed us to a room, wasn’t our grandfather’s corpse, and neither was the next room over, much to our quirky amusement, giggling, and finally, we found out we were adjacent to the correct funeral parlor, but not at the right address.
It was immensely, darkly funny at the time.
As a sidebar item, when we finally arrived — late — at the visitation? Propped up next to his seeming sleeping head? There was New Revised Standard Bible with a note from my grandmother. Southern women, always get in the last word, even from beyond the veil. They always get the last word, Southern matriarchs. Respect.
Me, my remaining family in place at the memorial? That’s fate. The Fates and the Furies. The remnants? That’s what we must all solve for, the unknown in this equation.
Funerals and Memorials, pt. 1
In my own world, this was handed to me by a cousin, and her commentary was something along the lines of, “This might not be ideal for everyone, but it’s the best we can do.” In part, this is the old family homestead from that branch of the family, in Port Angeles, Washington (State). Damn near the most northern point in the Western United States that’s still part of the contiguous states, sometimes referred to as the Lower 48. That very northwestern corner, just a few moments shy of Canada, and just a few miles shy of the actual corner, bordered by Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north, and the Olympic Mountains to the south. Seattle off to the distant east and the Northern Pacific, around that corner.
It is a long trek, and distant memories of both flying and driving, very distant childhood recollections, and with this date set months back? It allowed me to dredge up memories, sift through them, and screen for the nuggets — not always successful.
Part of the memories is being dragged up and down the whole of the Louisiana Purchase, in the summers, in a VW that didn’t have AC. Only once or twice did that long voyage in a small auto end at that northern most corner — early childhood summers.
Of the four cousins, two remain, and the services are really memorials for the older two who passed within weeks of each other, on that peninsula, last summer. One was in the care of hospice, and the other in a shelter. It’s the ravages of diseases and varying degrees of mental hygiene, or lack thereof.
My arrangements are simple, and I knew months in advance, so in late September, I was busy telling my various business colleagues, “I won’t be there in late November, I have to go to a funeral.” Announcing that in September, though?
“I know you’re good, but Kramer?”
It’s really just a scheduled memorial service.