funerals
I have to go to a memorial service tomorrow for my great-aunt. I always get this odd feeling with funerals or memorial services or whatever.
There have been a few different kinds of them that I have been to.
There are the ones where they directly affect you. Just slam into you right at the core and sit there. Just biding time inside of your innermost self until they chink away at some little part of you until you break down and lose it because with their leaving a piece of you has left as well.
There are the ones where you see its effect on others. I went to one a few years back of my mom's best friend growing up. I had met this woman and spent time at her house for one vacation but by no means knew her well. But by the expression of my mom's face, I could feel what she was feeling. I could imagine losing someone I had known growing up.
Then there are the random connection ones. The ones where they went to your church or worked with your parents or something and it's these that I find sometimes the most interesting because you're able to have an objective perspective. You can see what people are going through but you don't really feel it yourself. You can look at the deceased as a human being and see them for what they are; physically dead.
When I experience the first type, I'm too caught up in it to take much notice. It's almost more selfish in a way on my part.
When I see the second kind, I feel emotion and that is how I connect to it.
When I go to the third kind, I think about death and my own death which makes it pretty personal but full of objective thought.
Tomorrow is the memorial for an old, sick woman who had lost her youthful vigor long ago. Not that these are any easier to deal with, but in some ways she had died a long time ago. I doubt if I even knew her at all. When my great-grandmother died it was difficult for me because I had known what she had been like in her prime. She was still in her prime by anyone's count into her late eighties and didn't start fading away until her early nineties. My Aunt Veda, the one tomorrow, was sick for a long time and I never knew her very well. I don't know what I'm going to think when I go tomorrow. It will probably be the second kind. It's my grandpa's sister. He's lost siblings before, but not in my lifetime. I can't even imagine what it feels like to lose a sibling. Let alone a child. Let alone multiple children. He's experienced so much. Now he's going through so much still. He was always the intellectual, the emotional, the thoughtful one if I had to pick between my two grandfathers. My other one died when I was 5 but I remember him clearly and I remember his funeral vividly. He was a working class man his whole life. Now though, I see the awe-inspiring strength that is part of my living grandfather. I really can't explain it, but I feel as if I've always underestimated him.
There have been a few different kinds of them that I have been to.
There are the ones where they directly affect you. Just slam into you right at the core and sit there. Just biding time inside of your innermost self until they chink away at some little part of you until you break down and lose it because with their leaving a piece of you has left as well.
There are the ones where you see its effect on others. I went to one a few years back of my mom's best friend growing up. I had met this woman and spent time at her house for one vacation but by no means knew her well. But by the expression of my mom's face, I could feel what she was feeling. I could imagine losing someone I had known growing up.
Then there are the random connection ones. The ones where they went to your church or worked with your parents or something and it's these that I find sometimes the most interesting because you're able to have an objective perspective. You can see what people are going through but you don't really feel it yourself. You can look at the deceased as a human being and see them for what they are; physically dead.
When I experience the first type, I'm too caught up in it to take much notice. It's almost more selfish in a way on my part.
When I see the second kind, I feel emotion and that is how I connect to it.
When I go to the third kind, I think about death and my own death which makes it pretty personal but full of objective thought.
Tomorrow is the memorial for an old, sick woman who had lost her youthful vigor long ago. Not that these are any easier to deal with, but in some ways she had died a long time ago. I doubt if I even knew her at all. When my great-grandmother died it was difficult for me because I had known what she had been like in her prime. She was still in her prime by anyone's count into her late eighties and didn't start fading away until her early nineties. My Aunt Veda, the one tomorrow, was sick for a long time and I never knew her very well. I don't know what I'm going to think when I go tomorrow. It will probably be the second kind. It's my grandpa's sister. He's lost siblings before, but not in my lifetime. I can't even imagine what it feels like to lose a sibling. Let alone a child. Let alone multiple children. He's experienced so much. Now he's going through so much still. He was always the intellectual, the emotional, the thoughtful one if I had to pick between my two grandfathers. My other one died when I was 5 but I remember him clearly and I remember his funeral vividly. He was a working class man his whole life. Now though, I see the awe-inspiring strength that is part of my living grandfather. I really can't explain it, but I feel as if I've always underestimated him.