(no subject)
My MIL's funeral was Saturday. It was a long, hard day for everyone, and I don't know if the funeral offered comfort/closure or not.
It was a standard Episcopalian funeral service. Because I am not religious, I find such services unsettling: they follow the formula of celebrating eternal life in God, which is supposed to comfort believers with the thought that their loved one is "in a better place." I don't believe in such an afterlife myself, though I wish I could, and instead the service always bothers me because it is generic and impersonal. It seems to me that your funeral ought to be about you, a remembrance and celebration of you specifically. There was a bit of that in the gathering afterward, but I remember this from my FIL's funeral. He was a sweet, wonderful man, and no part of that service was about him as a person-the very special man we all loved and missed. The same was true here. The ritual reminds us that the person is gone, but it does not rejoice in who they were. To my agnostic spirit, that seems very wrong. I know that is the service my MIL wished for, and that she was far too humble to think she deserved more personal attention (she didn't want a eulogy, for instance, though there was one anyway at the after-gathering). But it still seems a terrible shame.
~*~
HSH and I spent Sunday getting the rest of the Xmas lights up, and Lauren surprised us by doing a lot of the inside Thanksgiving-removal and Xmas-decorating. It saves me all kinds of effort, and she did a really great job! ♥
A few of my "light sculptures" died (my angel with trumpet is x_x), so Lauren and I went out looking for replacements-to no avail. She found an inflato-penguin with a giant head that she really liked, but those are pretty dismal in their deflated state. Plus, with a 20-pound+ monster-cat stomping across it and the smaller one who doesn't fully retract her claws, I think it would have died a very sad death on our lawn in under a week. :0
I went out again at lunchtime yesterday to another store where I usually get good lights. It was packed with LED lights (the "white" ones are a hideous grayish-ghostly color), but I found a couple of chocolate-filled advent calendars for the kids. I also looked for adapters to combat one of my indoor-light-sculpture problems, but discovered my target solution is contraband! Apparently, NO-ONE wants you to ever convert a polarized plug connector down to an unpolarized plug connecter, which is exactly what I need when I'm driving two indoor light sculptures off of the same timer and one needs an extension cord. Good god-I'm going to have to sneak around Goodwill to look for more unpolarized extension cords!
LJ, stop eating everyone's comments already. :/
It was a standard Episcopalian funeral service. Because I am not religious, I find such services unsettling: they follow the formula of celebrating eternal life in God, which is supposed to comfort believers with the thought that their loved one is "in a better place." I don't believe in such an afterlife myself, though I wish I could, and instead the service always bothers me because it is generic and impersonal. It seems to me that your funeral ought to be about you, a remembrance and celebration of you specifically. There was a bit of that in the gathering afterward, but I remember this from my FIL's funeral. He was a sweet, wonderful man, and no part of that service was about him as a person-the very special man we all loved and missed. The same was true here. The ritual reminds us that the person is gone, but it does not rejoice in who they were. To my agnostic spirit, that seems very wrong. I know that is the service my MIL wished for, and that she was far too humble to think she deserved more personal attention (she didn't want a eulogy, for instance, though there was one anyway at the after-gathering). But it still seems a terrible shame.
~*~
HSH and I spent Sunday getting the rest of the Xmas lights up, and Lauren surprised us by doing a lot of the inside Thanksgiving-removal and Xmas-decorating. It saves me all kinds of effort, and she did a really great job! ♥
A few of my "light sculptures" died (my angel with trumpet is x_x), so Lauren and I went out looking for replacements-to no avail. She found an inflato-penguin with a giant head that she really liked, but those are pretty dismal in their deflated state. Plus, with a 20-pound+ monster-cat stomping across it and the smaller one who doesn't fully retract her claws, I think it would have died a very sad death on our lawn in under a week. :0
I went out again at lunchtime yesterday to another store where I usually get good lights. It was packed with LED lights (the "white" ones are a hideous grayish-ghostly color), but I found a couple of chocolate-filled advent calendars for the kids. I also looked for adapters to combat one of my indoor-light-sculpture problems, but discovered my target solution is contraband! Apparently, NO-ONE wants you to ever convert a polarized plug connector down to an unpolarized plug connecter, which is exactly what I need when I'm driving two indoor light sculptures off of the same timer and one needs an extension cord. Good god-I'm going to have to sneak around Goodwill to look for more unpolarized extension cords!
LJ, stop eating everyone's comments already. :/