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Ooof! I got home last night and man am I beat!
So, yeah, the wake and the funeral were lovely and I met a bunch of relations and relatives who all said ‘I remember you!’ and gestured about three feet off the ground to indicate how tall I was when I last saw them. Ha ha …
I cried. A lot. And sang ‘Uncle Walter Goes Waltzing With Bears’ when everyone had gone downstairs. I also lit the candles before the service, but while I was doing it I was thinking wildly ‘I’m not a Christian!.’ Afterwards I was beset with awful visions of being buried and waking up in a coffin, and Kill Bill and Adam Monroe and how my 103-and-a-half year-old relation’s body didn’t look like her at all the night before at the funeral home. It wasn’t her. It didn’t look like her, her mouth was all funny and because she didn’t look like herself it was like someone ELSE had died and I had trouble going up to put my paper crane with the words “You are missed” and my name written on the inside into the coffin.
She’d give you five dollars if you recited the alphabet backwards. I could only ever make it to ‘N-M-L’ and then trail off, blushing.
The ice-breaker when I sat down in the ‘circle’ with the other cousins was unzipping my boots and showing off my mismatched knee socks. I wore really bright ones at the funeral the next day (my favorite pair: purple with pink polka-dots, and bubblegum pink-and-blue argyle) because she liked that … *sniffsniff*
On a slightly lighter note, I interacted well with the other cousins (there were a BUNCH of us) and found my second-cousin (or something equally non-icky) rather cute. (If aimisan had been there she’d have been giggling like a madwoman over him, he’s got dark hair and looks REALLY NICE in a maroon-button-down-shirt) … I looked rather nice on both occasions and made jokes and used ‘big words’ like ‘contraband’ and ‘voyeuristic.’
NO HEREOS FANS. Like, AT ALL! How scary is THAT?!
Lost fans, though! And Lost was very illuminating last night … (more on that later, I’ll type up my ‘What aunt_zelda Thinks’ tomorrow morning, I’m too tired now …)
Btw, did anyone else see the eclipse Wednesday night? I saw its beginning and when it was about halfway, it was really cool and VERY pretty! It reminded me of the eclipse on Heroes, but, you know, with the moon, not the sun … and there were no Samurai about, regrettably.
The gay cousins are fine, but the one with a boyfriend didn’t bring him (their mom’s still a little crazy despite being medicated) which is sad but as he pointed out he’s glad his boyfriend got to meet the great lady (at Christmas.) That was the nice thing about her: she was cool with stuff. She just wanted everyone to be happy, regardless of society’s mood-swings. Others should learn from her …
Did you know that she once, at age eighty or so, put on a fur-coat and hid in a ditch to jump out at trick-or-treaters? I kid you not! (There were only five or so, it being the County and all …)
Speaking of the County, it’s lovely up there. Though the flatness and openness sometimes scares me, and it was accentuated by all the snow (I saw more snowmobiles than cars in some places) and I SAW WINDMILLS. I don’t know WHY people say they’ll ‘ruin the view’ I think they IMPROVE the view and make my little-green-heart sing with joy!
The first night I didn’t sleep too well, I stayed up until about three in the morning and had to wake up early and oooooogh I shouldn’t have watched that Terminator: 3 movie because it was weird and possibly lame and I LIKED IT. Also watched Blue Planet and some stuff about giant birds and Charmed and Stargate: Atlantis … I love having cable on weekdays …
The moon on the 20th was beautiful. All full and orangy at first, then golden … I swear, I’m half a werewolf …
At the funeral, I think she was there, dancing with her husband (who I never got to meet sadly.) I mean, I couldn’t see her or feel that she was there or anything, but I think she was there dancing all the same. The service was really lovely, but the talk about Jesus resurrecting made me want to feebly cheer ‘hurray for necromancy!’ which wouldn’t have been right at all … I have resolved to read the Bible, btw. All the stuff about ‘shadow-of-death’ and such was rather pretty in a sad way.
I got so choked up during the service that I couldn’t sing for the longest time, and I used to be in a PROFESSIONAL GIRLS CHOIR. I went through a whole thing of tissues too …
I ran into a relation who’s in the air-force and was all decked out in his uniform for the funeral. I didn’t get to talk to him about my flying lessons, though, because we only talked once and that was during the ‘mingle-and-eat’ period after the service when he said “The last time I saw you, I asked if I could have some of your food and you held it tight and said ‘no!’ and walked off! You were, what, seven?” and we laughed about how long ago that was and I pointed out that vegetarians don’t have much to eat at those kinds of gatherings and we have to hold onto what we can get.
There was this nice part of the service when people stood up and talked a bit about her. My mom tackled her public-speaking and family-fear problems head on and read a wonderful three-page recollection of her memories with the great lady. One of the gay cousins spoke too, recalling the time she wet her pants. Hee hee hee … I remembered the bear-dress story but couldn’t talk, and the time when an angry-aunt and an angry-uncle of mine were arguing last year and she interrupted saying ‘pickles, yes, I’d like some pickles!’ and calling onion-rings a vegetable and … oh dear … hearing someone call her ‘Mumsy’ really broke my heart.
*snuggles the afghan she crocheted me tonight*
It’s good to be home. My cat was very pleased to see me indeed.
(On a happier note, I printed out this epic Doctor/Master series in double-sided, sixteen pages but underestimated how SMALL size six-font is and spent a lot of the trip squinting and rubbing my eyes and using a magnifying glass that was square and small. *sigh* But I did write a lot of Doctor/Master slash! I’ll type some up and post it … sometime … soon … because rehearsals start on Monday! Ack! I invented a new character in ‘
