This afternoon was the celebration of her life. It was a party mom would have loved, except for the fact that she very certainly wasn't there. If she doesn't live here anymore, I wonder where she is. And also, although I was the one who came up with the idea of "celebrating her life" I ended up being a very wet blanket--the kind who cries all the time.
It was the first time I was seeing people outside of family, and every time someone said something kind or I spied a sweet picture of her face on the slideshow, I was a puddle. At one point I was clutching neighbors I hadn't seen decades and sobbing into their shoulder. (They meant to visit dad on Wednesday, but had hurried down to say goodbye to me as I leave at the end of the day and they didn't want to miss me. So although their words were fairly standard--"we all lost a good friend"-- it seemed so fucking poignant in the moment.)
My mom's cousin with whom she had a lot of adventures made me laugh when she said an old (male) colleague of my sister's was a "rugged beauty." We got a lot of mileage out of that for the rest of the afternoon. Another cousin was addressed by a completely different--and made up--name by the security guard, and we all used that name for her for the rest of the afternoon as well. I guess, we all needed to regress/recoup a bit.
Pic: A picture of the celebration a friend shared with me.
3 comments:
I love how matriarchal the formal ceremony sounds.
And I understand very well the need to find some comic relief to break up the intensity and all-consuming nature of grief. I think it's actually a physical/chemical response.
I like the idea of commending her spirit to her mother and grandmother.
I love that she is with her mother and grandmother, and very likely their mothers and grandmothers…
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