Funerals and Death

[earllogjam]

Well the funeral is over....

It was an open casket Catholic service. The service was long and the casket was open the entire time. I did pay my last repects though and it was good to say good bye. I did get a chuckle though when I looked into the casket - my friend, gaunt as he was after dealing with cancer was growing a week's worth of a beard which I've never seen him with - so at first I didn't think I was at the right funeral or they switched bodies. Kind of made me feel good that he fought it till the very end and still cared about himself, how he looked and that he was looking foward to getting over the cancer. I wouldn't have gotten that if he had been cremated.

Yeah I cried. The best part was seeing a lot of people I haven't seen in a long while, mutual friends, his relatives, but especially his mom. Lots of food at the wake and even though it was a funeral it felt good to be in the company of all that love, sharing grief and stories with others who felt the same as I did.

I realized it doesn't really matter what I believe in terms of what a proper funeral is or my view on embalming because his funeral is not about me it's about the celebration of his life. The ritual, sermon, open casket were secondary to the celebration and remembering with all who loved him. It was secondary to what really mattered.

 

[Quite Irate]

I feel strangely detached at funerals. When my grandmother died, I was either 12 or 13. I liked her, and fully understood what had happened, but I didn't feel all that sad. She was in her 90's, had had a good life, and simply expired in her sleep. It wasn't tragic in any sense, and I knew that she'd made her mark in the world and it was time for her to move on to something new. I'm not religious, but I still felt satisfied. My mother was her only kid who cared about her, and that really pissed me off. Since then we've had no contact with my mom's side of the family at all.

As for me, I don't know what I'm going to do. I suppose it doesn't really matter once you're gone, but I would like to go out in a bang if there wasn't any chance of survival.