As one door closes, another opens.
Thanks to my timing, I ended up going to the funeral mass yesterday. When I pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home, most of the parking lot was blocked off, and I had no choice but to drive past two men in suits who made up a sort of checkpoint. I was asked my name, and a valet parked my car. Then, once we'd paid our last respects (being called up by name to do so), we were led back to our cars, a bright neon orange FUNERAL tag hanging from the rear view mirror of each one, and given our pecking order. I was to follow a white sedan with Mass. plates, and there was a giant SUV behind me.
I realized yesterday that the real reason that I don't like going to funeral masses isn't that they are tedious. It's because I am often struck by how primitive they make us seem, as a species, as a culture. There are so many parts of the service, to me, that just scream we're all afraid that when we die we're nothing more than a wad of rotting flesh and we don't really have souls, or even worse that we're so horrible and sinful that we descend into the lake of fire or whatever, so let's hide that fear under a great big pile of groveling and prostration. I'm sorry if that's offensive to people, but it's honestly the way I see it. Sometimes that element is more blatantly on display than others, but some aspect of it is always there, and there is this almost calculated desperation about it which I find... distracting. (That's the nicest word I can find.) Everlasting life is the main product that churches sell (think about it) so a death is the perfect time to remind everyone and make a sales pitch.
Some churches take it even farther, capitalizing on the fear and taking the opportunity to focus on how sinful and horrible we are, and if you don't do and think everything the (human, fallible) authority figures in the church God tells you to do and think then you'll burn burn burn, and better hope your loved one was Right With God when s/he went! because you NEVER KNOW when it's gonna be your turn and your time is up! Better be good as we define it and repent of your many sins and do our flavor of religion or else we God will punish you! Fear fear fear!
While that's an extreme caricature, I've been to funerals that were almost that bad, and most of the ones I've been to have at least a hint of that schtick going on.
And see, my biggest problem with all that is that I just really can't believe a single bit of it, so I am neither comforted nor sold. I probably sound disrespectful and cynical about the process because it clashes so violently with my own perspective on life, the universe, the nature of reality, that I can't help but get rubbed the wrong way when I encounter it. The God I know, the one who totally won me over and with whom I feel I have a pretty good relationship, who has been a huge source of strength and clarity and support through my darkest moments, is a loving deity who wants the best for all of us, who did not create us to live in constant fear of getting it wrong or simply to suffer, and who is not a projection of all our shame and control issues. I also believe to the core of my being, as surely as I believe anything, that when we die, the everlasting and permanent part of who we are (the soul) rejoins Him/Her/It, that it can't help doing that any more than we can help "obeying" the law of gravity, that I don't need a church's intervention or participation as a middleman in order for that to happen, and further that our lives are an opportunity to try things out and there's no "test" at the end, and there's no heaven or hell about it. If you live a good life, if you are loving and ethical and honorable and try to keep your intention clean, you get more out of it, you have a richer experience, that's all. I really do believe that.
Within that context, the real purpose of a funeral is to help the folks who are still here through a painful transition, to grieve our loss and reflect on the person, and relationship, that was. Seriously. The deceased doesn't need the funeral; we do. The deceased has moved on, but we're still here. We need to mourn and we need to let go and we need to honor the person, and maybe we need to do some soul searching about our own lives or mortality. Taking every opportunity to gratuitously add something along the lines of everything is okay, he's not really dead, we'll all see him again as long as we all believe in JESUS (and accept all the church doctrine on every moral issue) just gets in the way of that process for me.
Given all that baggage, I was reluctant to attend the mass. But at the same time I wanted to honor Kevin and what he meant to me, and show support for his family, and sometimes Catholics manage to surprise me, especially in this part of the US, and I figured that even if this were a fire and brimstone flavor of Catholicism that one hour of religion was endurable. I felt myself kind of getting herded into it, almost like I was just supposed to be there for whatever reason, so I went with it. I was in a kind of numb and malleable state yesterday, so I didn't put up a lot of resistance.
I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised with the mass, and touched, and comforted, and even though the offending elements I mentioned earlier were there, they were unobtrusive enough to tune out. Instead of making veiled references to Kevin's "sins" as if they were somehow worse than anyone else's, or even sins in the first place (yeah, I've known priests to do that, at the funerals of gay men), he took the high road and chose to focus on the unconditional love version of God, which works for me. He picked an unusual piece of scripture for a funeral mass, but made the point with it that God loves us for what's in our hearts, no matter how we might mess things up or what mistakes we might make or the ways we end up falling short of expectation, and it was beautiful and touching and totally appropriate the way he tied it all together, especially the way he quoted one of the cousins: "You can't help but love Kevin." And that was so true. If there were any friends or family who were conflicted about where Kevin's soul was going because of church doctrine, this priest seemed to make a compelling argument that the answer was "not hell".
I sat with three members of my support group, and the facilitator, and it really was a fitting farewell that I'm glad I participated in.
Then we drove to the cemetery, and they didn't actually put him in the ground then and there; instead, there was another brief prayer, and we all kind of had a chance to touch the casket once more, and then we were invited to a reception. But between other commitments I had later in the day and the fact that I have no clue where this place is, and the only people in this crowd that I knew were his mother and one of his sisters, and only briefly at that, I chose that moment to make my exit.
I am feeling a lot more at peace about his death, although there's still a dull ache. But now I think it's more about the void that he left than anything I did or didn't do, and honestly? I'm not in any hurry to make that disappear. It doesn't interfere with my day to day activities anymore, and it also reminds me that I still have a heart that can feel.
I had some time on my hands while I drove in the procession to the cemetery, and between bouts of crying I got to thinking about the kind of service I want when I die, and to be honest that's not something I really think about much. From my point of view, when I die, I'm done with my body, and whatever anyone wants to do with it at that point is for them, not me, so they can figure it out. But I'm thinking now that I don't want a bunch of people who love me fighting over what to do with my corpse. I also realize that there's no good place to bury me, since there would be a significant contingent in both Texas and New England/NY/NJ who might be comforted having my grave nearby, and I really don't want to have to choose (or worse, make them choose) who gets to have that. So I think that cremation would probably make a lot of sense. While I admit there's a kind of tacky corner of my mind that would derive some pleasure from knowing, if my parents outlive me, that I was to be buried with my PA, in the end I don't think that worth the trouble of embalming me and picking a spot in the ground to dig a hole, and it's not like they would even know for sure that my corpse had a ring in its cock, and I wouldn't be around to enjoy their reaction if they did know. Plus with cremation, you can all divvy up the ashes as you see fit.
I know that probably sounds kind of crude, but it's true.
I'm also thinking that I need to get some stuff in writing, because between having divorced parents, who probably wouldn't respect my partner's wishes, or want to include my birthmother and younger sister, not to mention even agreeing with each other, I think it would be easier to just spell it all out, so that it's clear what they should do with my remains, in as legally binding a manner as I can. Kevin's death has reminded me that the last thing in the world that anyone wants to think about when a loved one passes is what would he have wanted? and that's even in the best case scenario that everyone gets along with each other. I highly doubt that my family would fit that description.
So that's a project I am going to work on, and I invite other folks without a will to think about doing that soon too. It's probably the biggest favor you could ever do for your family.
My next thing yesterday afternoon was a write-in at the Borders at Providence Place Mall, but it ended up being a bust for me. For some reason my poor little laptop froze up, and wouldn't get beyond a certain part of the rebooting process, so I had to come home and fiddle with it, reinstalling the OS. Ultimately I am going to do a clean install, wiping the hard drive and starting over; while I got it running again, it's running really slow, and there are so many copies of things I don't understand at this juncture, and it's basically a mobile backup computer, that it's easier to just wipe it clean and start over. That's going to take a while, obviously, moving stuff over to the eMac and double checking to be sure I'm not missing anything, but hopefully I'll accomplish that tomorrow. I'm learning a lot about where OS X puts things, which I guess is good, but the reason I'm learning it is kind of sucky.
Unfortunately this whole disaster meant that I went two days without writing a single word on my NaNo novel. I'd gotten within 3500 words of where I was supposed to be, putting me two days behind when I had been seven, but as of last night I was slipping again.
I guess I could have gotten some writing done last night, but we had a wedding to attend. (!) Yeah. It was a very unconventional yet meaningful and powerful ceremony and kind of fun too, and while it was not legally binding (gay marriage isn't legal in RI... yet, and it was between two women) it was still a powerful moment and beautiful ritual that I feel honored to have shared. I knew a lot more people than I expected to know, and I got to introduce quillon to lots of folks, some of them being some of my favorite people in the world that he didn't already know. That was kind of neat. (There is probably more to say about that, but I'll save it for later.)
I'm glad we went, even though it made for a long day that stretched me emotionally in many different directions. I'm not sure that I've ever gone to a funeral and a wedding in the same day before. One of the things that came out of going to the wedding was that Q and I started talking a little more specifically about having a commitment ceremony of our own. Right now we're thinking June 2007, to give us time to plan for it financially. We've talked about it in general terms before, but we're starting to get more specific about it.
The big thing today was that we went to a write in that was basically me, Q, and the municipal liaison who set the thing up. If we had known it was going to be just the three of us we wouldn't have had to go all the way to East Greenwich, and could have driven five minutes through a quiet neighborhood to Reflections Cafe. Oh well. At least it was a productive day for all of us; I managed to write over 4k words. Another day like that and I'll be caught up.
Imagine a witty insightful ending here, beautifully tying everything together, because this entry is getting way too long and covering way too much ground and looking kind of like a Frankenstein hodgepodge jumble, so I'd best shut up now before I think of another tangent to run off and explore in here.
Al Franken, Iraqi Independence Day Parade
I realized yesterday that the real reason that I don't like going to funeral masses isn't that they are tedious. It's because I am often struck by how primitive they make us seem, as a species, as a culture. There are so many parts of the service, to me, that just scream we're all afraid that when we die we're nothing more than a wad of rotting flesh and we don't really have souls, or even worse that we're so horrible and sinful that we descend into the lake of fire or whatever, so let's hide that fear under a great big pile of groveling and prostration. I'm sorry if that's offensive to people, but it's honestly the way I see it. Sometimes that element is more blatantly on display than others, but some aspect of it is always there, and there is this almost calculated desperation about it which I find... distracting. (That's the nicest word I can find.) Everlasting life is the main product that churches sell (think about it) so a death is the perfect time to remind everyone and make a sales pitch.
Some churches take it even farther, capitalizing on the fear and taking the opportunity to focus on how sinful and horrible we are, and if you don't do and think everything the (human, fallible) authority figures in the church God tells you to do and think then you'll burn burn burn, and better hope your loved one was Right With God when s/he went! because you NEVER KNOW when it's gonna be your turn and your time is up! Better be good as we define it and repent of your many sins and do our flavor of religion or else we God will punish you! Fear fear fear!
While that's an extreme caricature, I've been to funerals that were almost that bad, and most of the ones I've been to have at least a hint of that schtick going on.
And see, my biggest problem with all that is that I just really can't believe a single bit of it, so I am neither comforted nor sold. I probably sound disrespectful and cynical about the process because it clashes so violently with my own perspective on life, the universe, the nature of reality, that I can't help but get rubbed the wrong way when I encounter it. The God I know, the one who totally won me over and with whom I feel I have a pretty good relationship, who has been a huge source of strength and clarity and support through my darkest moments, is a loving deity who wants the best for all of us, who did not create us to live in constant fear of getting it wrong or simply to suffer, and who is not a projection of all our shame and control issues. I also believe to the core of my being, as surely as I believe anything, that when we die, the everlasting and permanent part of who we are (the soul) rejoins Him/Her/It, that it can't help doing that any more than we can help "obeying" the law of gravity, that I don't need a church's intervention or participation as a middleman in order for that to happen, and further that our lives are an opportunity to try things out and there's no "test" at the end, and there's no heaven or hell about it. If you live a good life, if you are loving and ethical and honorable and try to keep your intention clean, you get more out of it, you have a richer experience, that's all. I really do believe that.
Within that context, the real purpose of a funeral is to help the folks who are still here through a painful transition, to grieve our loss and reflect on the person, and relationship, that was. Seriously. The deceased doesn't need the funeral; we do. The deceased has moved on, but we're still here. We need to mourn and we need to let go and we need to honor the person, and maybe we need to do some soul searching about our own lives or mortality. Taking every opportunity to gratuitously add something along the lines of everything is okay, he's not really dead, we'll all see him again as long as we all believe in JESUS (and accept all the church doctrine on every moral issue) just gets in the way of that process for me.
Given all that baggage, I was reluctant to attend the mass. But at the same time I wanted to honor Kevin and what he meant to me, and show support for his family, and sometimes Catholics manage to surprise me, especially in this part of the US, and I figured that even if this were a fire and brimstone flavor of Catholicism that one hour of religion was endurable. I felt myself kind of getting herded into it, almost like I was just supposed to be there for whatever reason, so I went with it. I was in a kind of numb and malleable state yesterday, so I didn't put up a lot of resistance.
I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised with the mass, and touched, and comforted, and even though the offending elements I mentioned earlier were there, they were unobtrusive enough to tune out. Instead of making veiled references to Kevin's "sins" as if they were somehow worse than anyone else's, or even sins in the first place (yeah, I've known priests to do that, at the funerals of gay men), he took the high road and chose to focus on the unconditional love version of God, which works for me. He picked an unusual piece of scripture for a funeral mass, but made the point with it that God loves us for what's in our hearts, no matter how we might mess things up or what mistakes we might make or the ways we end up falling short of expectation, and it was beautiful and touching and totally appropriate the way he tied it all together, especially the way he quoted one of the cousins: "You can't help but love Kevin." And that was so true. If there were any friends or family who were conflicted about where Kevin's soul was going because of church doctrine, this priest seemed to make a compelling argument that the answer was "not hell".
I sat with three members of my support group, and the facilitator, and it really was a fitting farewell that I'm glad I participated in.
Then we drove to the cemetery, and they didn't actually put him in the ground then and there; instead, there was another brief prayer, and we all kind of had a chance to touch the casket once more, and then we were invited to a reception. But between other commitments I had later in the day and the fact that I have no clue where this place is, and the only people in this crowd that I knew were his mother and one of his sisters, and only briefly at that, I chose that moment to make my exit.
I am feeling a lot more at peace about his death, although there's still a dull ache. But now I think it's more about the void that he left than anything I did or didn't do, and honestly? I'm not in any hurry to make that disappear. It doesn't interfere with my day to day activities anymore, and it also reminds me that I still have a heart that can feel.
I had some time on my hands while I drove in the procession to the cemetery, and between bouts of crying I got to thinking about the kind of service I want when I die, and to be honest that's not something I really think about much. From my point of view, when I die, I'm done with my body, and whatever anyone wants to do with it at that point is for them, not me, so they can figure it out. But I'm thinking now that I don't want a bunch of people who love me fighting over what to do with my corpse. I also realize that there's no good place to bury me, since there would be a significant contingent in both Texas and New England/NY/NJ who might be comforted having my grave nearby, and I really don't want to have to choose (or worse, make them choose) who gets to have that. So I think that cremation would probably make a lot of sense. While I admit there's a kind of tacky corner of my mind that would derive some pleasure from knowing, if my parents outlive me, that I was to be buried with my PA, in the end I don't think that worth the trouble of embalming me and picking a spot in the ground to dig a hole, and it's not like they would even know for sure that my corpse had a ring in its cock, and I wouldn't be around to enjoy their reaction if they did know. Plus with cremation, you can all divvy up the ashes as you see fit.
I know that probably sounds kind of crude, but it's true.
I'm also thinking that I need to get some stuff in writing, because between having divorced parents, who probably wouldn't respect my partner's wishes, or want to include my birthmother and younger sister, not to mention even agreeing with each other, I think it would be easier to just spell it all out, so that it's clear what they should do with my remains, in as legally binding a manner as I can. Kevin's death has reminded me that the last thing in the world that anyone wants to think about when a loved one passes is what would he have wanted? and that's even in the best case scenario that everyone gets along with each other. I highly doubt that my family would fit that description.
So that's a project I am going to work on, and I invite other folks without a will to think about doing that soon too. It's probably the biggest favor you could ever do for your family.
My next thing yesterday afternoon was a write-in at the Borders at Providence Place Mall, but it ended up being a bust for me. For some reason my poor little laptop froze up, and wouldn't get beyond a certain part of the rebooting process, so I had to come home and fiddle with it, reinstalling the OS. Ultimately I am going to do a clean install, wiping the hard drive and starting over; while I got it running again, it's running really slow, and there are so many copies of things I don't understand at this juncture, and it's basically a mobile backup computer, that it's easier to just wipe it clean and start over. That's going to take a while, obviously, moving stuff over to the eMac and double checking to be sure I'm not missing anything, but hopefully I'll accomplish that tomorrow. I'm learning a lot about where OS X puts things, which I guess is good, but the reason I'm learning it is kind of sucky.
Unfortunately this whole disaster meant that I went two days without writing a single word on my NaNo novel. I'd gotten within 3500 words of where I was supposed to be, putting me two days behind when I had been seven, but as of last night I was slipping again.
I guess I could have gotten some writing done last night, but we had a wedding to attend. (!) Yeah. It was a very unconventional yet meaningful and powerful ceremony and kind of fun too, and while it was not legally binding (gay marriage isn't legal in RI... yet, and it was between two women) it was still a powerful moment and beautiful ritual that I feel honored to have shared. I knew a lot more people than I expected to know, and I got to introduce quillon to lots of folks, some of them being some of my favorite people in the world that he didn't already know. That was kind of neat. (There is probably more to say about that, but I'll save it for later.)
I'm glad we went, even though it made for a long day that stretched me emotionally in many different directions. I'm not sure that I've ever gone to a funeral and a wedding in the same day before. One of the things that came out of going to the wedding was that Q and I started talking a little more specifically about having a commitment ceremony of our own. Right now we're thinking June 2007, to give us time to plan for it financially. We've talked about it in general terms before, but we're starting to get more specific about it.
The big thing today was that we went to a write in that was basically me, Q, and the municipal liaison who set the thing up. If we had known it was going to be just the three of us we wouldn't have had to go all the way to East Greenwich, and could have driven five minutes through a quiet neighborhood to Reflections Cafe. Oh well. At least it was a productive day for all of us; I managed to write over 4k words. Another day like that and I'll be caught up.
Imagine a witty insightful ending here, beautifully tying everything together, because this entry is getting way too long and covering way too much ground and looking kind of like a Frankenstein hodgepodge jumble, so I'd best shut up now before I think of another tangent to run off and explore in here.
Al Franken, Iraqi Independence Day Parade