(no subject)
Well, I'm back, and life's settling back down into what passes for normal, I guess. Figured I'd write one more 'State of the Ysabet' kind of thing before I forget the details.
First off and foremost, if I haven't thanked y'all for your hugs, words of comfort and kindness, please consider yourselves thanked; believe me, it truly helped to see the emails and lj responses that came in-- I passed them along to my family, and they were both surprised and rather overwhelmed.
Things went about as well as they could, I guess; the day after Mama died we all went down to the funeral home that my family's used for years, Wilson's, and worked up what we thought would be appropriate. Many of the details had been preplanned-- casket, headstone, type of visitation, etc. On Wednesday the obituary went into the paper; on Thursday we had the visitation, and on Friday the funeral.
There were tons of people at the visitation and I guess it went okay; I don't like them, never have, and I just wanted it to be over. Mama's body didn't look like her (but why should it, after all?) and I spent most of the time off in one corner or another with either my Aunt Irma or some of my brother's friends. The flowers were amazing-- I'd asked for yellow roses to be included in the casket-spray for a particular reason, and they were, and... okay, I should probably explain that. See-- during one of my parents' anniversaries back during my teens, my dad (who was not a romantic type normally) went out and bought my mom a humongous rose-bush in full bloom, huge yellow roses of the wide-open variety. Gorgeous thing-- he planted it out front in the wee hours and surprised her with it, and she loved it enormously. When he died, I put yellow roses on his grave in memory of that, and my mom had me gather some for her to dry and keep (there's one pressed in the family bible.) So I asked for them for her too..... and at the funeral the next day, at the very end, I and my siblings were asked to step up and take a flower from the casket-spray to keep in her memory. We didn't know about or expect this; the funeral director had known Mama for years, and he thought it'd be something she'd like.
I think he was right. So I have mine, pressed inside a book and drying now. When it's fully dry, I'll have it framed between sheets of glass and keep it that way.
I remember all sorts of strange little things that were significant at the time to me, things that felt important: thinking about how much my aunt Irma and my little sister looked alike, being grateful when my nephew Alex said he'd light incense at the local Buddhist temple he's been frequenting lately, watching how careful my nephews and great-nephew and brother-in-law moved together as pallbearers, listening to my great-nephew's fiance discuss how many kids she and Jake planned on having later on at the dinner following the funeral... It all got very surreal and it still feels that way sometimes. That dinner-- I know it's a Southern thing, but I didn't expect it to get quite that huge; people just kept showing up with food-- whole sliced hams, a chocolate sheet-cake, casserole-dishes of rice and baskets of biscuits and pies and just... and everybody was hungry, and there seemed like there were dozens and dozens of people in my older sister's house, and then somebody brought out this box of old photos, and OH my gods there were some there that I'd never seen before-- I posted one of my mom earlier. And we sat around and went through them and sometimes we laughed, and other times we'd end up crying, and it was just... very strange.
I stayed a few more days after that, went out on Easter to my favorite seafood restaurant (a little place called the Captain's Table, which has the finest She-Crab Soup on the planet and really good fried froglegs) and managed to walk on the beach just a little. The will got taken care of (I wrote about that earlier, I think) and I flew home on 4/6.
Mostly... I'm dealing with things okay. Not all the time, and not all that *well* all the time; I'm not a saint. I'm doing a few things that I didn't expect, like substituting one anxiety for another (just figured that one out) and I find myself crying over the oddest things at the oddest moments... I know that grief is a natural process and will happen whether I want it to or not, like water flowing around rocks-- you can try to stop it, but the water gets through anyway. And a lot of the time I'm able to manage well enough and cheerfully enough, and that's fine. I have good friends here, and eventually I'll get past this. I just have to be patient. Writing helps, keeping busy helps-- I totally failed at that today and spent most of my day curled up on the bed, reading or watching anime or napping with the cats. I kind of lost it at work on Friday and used up a lot of tissues; we had a particularly horrific child death case come in, and it just set me off, I guess. Em wrote me a lovely distraction-omake from Three Thieves, and that was good-- the weirdest things are comforting.
So I guess I'm doing okay. Or if I'm not, then I will be eventually. Again, my thanks to you all.
First off and foremost, if I haven't thanked y'all for your hugs, words of comfort and kindness, please consider yourselves thanked; believe me, it truly helped to see the emails and lj responses that came in-- I passed them along to my family, and they were both surprised and rather overwhelmed.
Things went about as well as they could, I guess; the day after Mama died we all went down to the funeral home that my family's used for years, Wilson's, and worked up what we thought would be appropriate. Many of the details had been preplanned-- casket, headstone, type of visitation, etc. On Wednesday the obituary went into the paper; on Thursday we had the visitation, and on Friday the funeral.
There were tons of people at the visitation and I guess it went okay; I don't like them, never have, and I just wanted it to be over. Mama's body didn't look like her (but why should it, after all?) and I spent most of the time off in one corner or another with either my Aunt Irma or some of my brother's friends. The flowers were amazing-- I'd asked for yellow roses to be included in the casket-spray for a particular reason, and they were, and... okay, I should probably explain that. See-- during one of my parents' anniversaries back during my teens, my dad (who was not a romantic type normally) went out and bought my mom a humongous rose-bush in full bloom, huge yellow roses of the wide-open variety. Gorgeous thing-- he planted it out front in the wee hours and surprised her with it, and she loved it enormously. When he died, I put yellow roses on his grave in memory of that, and my mom had me gather some for her to dry and keep (there's one pressed in the family bible.) So I asked for them for her too..... and at the funeral the next day, at the very end, I and my siblings were asked to step up and take a flower from the casket-spray to keep in her memory. We didn't know about or expect this; the funeral director had known Mama for years, and he thought it'd be something she'd like.
I think he was right. So I have mine, pressed inside a book and drying now. When it's fully dry, I'll have it framed between sheets of glass and keep it that way.
I remember all sorts of strange little things that were significant at the time to me, things that felt important: thinking about how much my aunt Irma and my little sister looked alike, being grateful when my nephew Alex said he'd light incense at the local Buddhist temple he's been frequenting lately, watching how careful my nephews and great-nephew and brother-in-law moved together as pallbearers, listening to my great-nephew's fiance discuss how many kids she and Jake planned on having later on at the dinner following the funeral... It all got very surreal and it still feels that way sometimes. That dinner-- I know it's a Southern thing, but I didn't expect it to get quite that huge; people just kept showing up with food-- whole sliced hams, a chocolate sheet-cake, casserole-dishes of rice and baskets of biscuits and pies and just... and everybody was hungry, and there seemed like there were dozens and dozens of people in my older sister's house, and then somebody brought out this box of old photos, and OH my gods there were some there that I'd never seen before-- I posted one of my mom earlier. And we sat around and went through them and sometimes we laughed, and other times we'd end up crying, and it was just... very strange.
I stayed a few more days after that, went out on Easter to my favorite seafood restaurant (a little place called the Captain's Table, which has the finest She-Crab Soup on the planet and really good fried froglegs) and managed to walk on the beach just a little. The will got taken care of (I wrote about that earlier, I think) and I flew home on 4/6.
Mostly... I'm dealing with things okay. Not all the time, and not all that *well* all the time; I'm not a saint. I'm doing a few things that I didn't expect, like substituting one anxiety for another (just figured that one out) and I find myself crying over the oddest things at the oddest moments... I know that grief is a natural process and will happen whether I want it to or not, like water flowing around rocks-- you can try to stop it, but the water gets through anyway. And a lot of the time I'm able to manage well enough and cheerfully enough, and that's fine. I have good friends here, and eventually I'll get past this. I just have to be patient. Writing helps, keeping busy helps-- I totally failed at that today and spent most of my day curled up on the bed, reading or watching anime or napping with the cats. I kind of lost it at work on Friday and used up a lot of tissues; we had a particularly horrific child death case come in, and it just set me off, I guess. Em wrote me a lovely distraction-omake from Three Thieves, and that was good-- the weirdest things are comforting.
So I guess I'm doing okay. Or if I'm not, then I will be eventually. Again, my thanks to you all.