post-funeral action update!

Waiting for my Flickr photos to upload. My internets have been spotty this week, so while I've been mostly homebound I've been thrown abruptly on my own resources in order to amuse myself. I barely remember what life was like in my home before hot & cold running webpages. It's...much less filled with trivia, for one thing.

Besides living it up like it was 1995, I've been recovering from a mercifully mild cold, babysitting Sage at irregular intervals, finishing up my report cards and generally trying to get on top of the backlog that formed during my grandmother's mourning. I haven't been able to make any troupe practices lately, although my Monday ATS class with Valizan, despite being in Oakville, has been 58 kinds of awesome. Not the least of why is because I'm carpooling with Jessamyn & Juuki, so there's a lot more time for gossip and tea than is usual at troupe practice.

Anyway. Despite the fact that report cards are one long haul away from completion and despite the fact that I lost a job opportunity and an elder on the same day, and despite the fact that exam season always makes me anxious, miserable, unhealthy, feral and desperate to run away to somewhere far from my perpetually snowed-in driveway, I'm cautiously optimistic for the end of the week. I'm not 100% sure what I'm basing that optimism on, but it's there. Maybe I'm just ready for the spring term, with its attendant rocketslide to June. Maybe I'm just glad that I can wear black out of choice, not social necessity.

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow of the funeral. I was too out of it for much in the way of recording, anyway. I did a eulogy at the funeral, which seemed to be well-received, but it's like a 8-year-old's piano recital. You never know. Who's going to go up to you and say, "hey, that eulogy really blew. Sorry we asked you." I found myself much more comfortable with my grandmother's corpse than I was with her post-stroke state in the hospital, or maybe I just had three weeks of practice without her answering back and that made it easier. Blake has been handling it well, occasionally asking "when is GG coming back?" My glib answer ("when Jesus does, and that's not for a long time") feels shallow.

I didn't cry. I think most of the shock and guilt and panic all went out of me when I read that letter to her a few weeks ago. I started trembling half-way through the eulogy, but it wasn't a sentimental speech – I had to pause part way for the laughter to subside – and it didn't carry me into spasms of weeping. I still hear her voice in my head, and it makes me smile. It made me smile to see my family together, cracking jokes before the visitation. It made me smile to know exactly where we should have dinner before the visitation, because we'd gone there with her 4 years ago before another funeral. It made me smile to re-use my wedding program inserts, and force "And did these feet" on another unsuspecting group of people. I think it was a good funeral. I think she would have approved.

Labels: bat masterson, blake, dancing, death, family

- 0 comments/hedgehogs -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/28/2009 02:02:00 p.m.