Four Bloggers and a Funeral (UPDATED)
Yesterday began with a great memorial service.
Don`t look at me like that -- it really did.
Seriously, when the people at Little Son`s yuppie preschool asked me if I had signed up for a job on its annual "Maintenance Day," the Saturday on which parents come in and do on-site improvements, I told them, "No -- I have to go to my friend`s uncle`s funeral."
The stony silences suggested not everyone believed me, but come on -- I could have thought up a much more believable lie than that. If I were lying I would have said it was my own uncle, at least.
I had expected the funeral to be on the dull side. I had never met the deceased, my friend`s uncle, who was a retired Lutheran minister, and I knew very little about him. I was there to help some of the other moms from our school pick up and arrange some simple food for the reception afterward.
But everything about the service was beautiful and affecting -- the music (which included Latin requiems as well as Norwegian hymns, all sung by a professional quality choir and accompanied by almost the entire church), the building (built just over 100 years ago, before the '06 quake), and most of all, the touching tributes by the people who`d known him:
"...He took me in 39 years ago, when I was a 16-year-old runaway, and changed my life..."
"...He baptized my partner, who was dying of AIDS..."
"...He was the kindest man I ever met."
In fact, I wish I had the chance to come in contact with him before he was a bag of ashes on the alter, but I suppose being in a roomful of people whose lives he touched was the next-best thing.
I admit I know very few details about the modern Lutheran Church -- hey, I can barely keep up with Catholicism, Buddhism and Shinto, the religions various members of my family practice at home.
Oh, I know the basic historical outline of Martin Luther getting himself excommunicated for speaking out against the Roman Catholic Church`s corrupt sale of indulgences, leading to the Protestant Reformation, etc. But there are so many different flavors (synods, whatever) of Lutheranism nowadays that I just can`t keep them all straight.
The deceased guy was obviously not from one of the religion`s conservative factions, because he was one of the founding members of Lutherans Concerned back in 1974 . (I know it sounds funny that I keep calling him "the deceased guy," but I am purposely avoiding mentioning his name here, so that my blog won`t show up in Google searches by people looking for more substantive info on his life and work. If anyone is interested in reading more about him, here is his obit ).
After the service, his ashes were buried under a tile in the church garden.
There was one tiny moment of high tension during the service, when all the people were invited to receive communion. Three of the other moms from our Catholic school were sitting in the pew with me, and we had a very lively whispered, "So should we go up there?" conversation.
I mean, the idea of an all-inclusive, everyone-welcome Eucharist was a pretty radical concept to us "Lord-I-am-not-worthy-to-receive-you" people.
I decided not to go. I don`t receive communion in the Catholic church, for many reasons, so I thought it would feel as if I`d slipped into some weird parallel universe, if I were to receive it in a church that was pretty much its mirror image -- well, except for any mention of the Pope, and a conspicuous absence of any special alters to or statues of the Virgin Mary (they did have a really nice angel statue, though). I was concerned that my abstention would be taken as a lack of respect for the dead, but I figured I should try to be consistent.
In the end, only one out of the seven Catholic moms I knew there went up to receive communion. She said later that it felt like exactly the right thing to do at the time, and joked, "Lightening did not strike me dead."
Almost a year ago, I went with some school mothers to the funeral of another school mom`s father. At the time, I remember thinking how my family had only been living in San Francisco for a few months, and yet there I was, already at a funeral -- this had a funny way of making me feel accepted in our new community.
Yesterday, I had another oddly comforting thought. It occurred to me that if I were to suddenly drop dead, the mothers from our school would probably offer to help poor Hub with all the things he didn`t know about, or understand. They, not him, would decide what kind of cookies to buy for the reception after the service -- all he`d have to think about would be the logistics of getting my ashes back to Japan and scattering them into the Kamo-gawa when the police weren`t looking (or whatever else he wants to do with me -- I am unlikely to give a hoot, either way, at that point). Hub would really need a lot of guidance, if I died, since I have no other family nearby, and since my parents probably wouldn`t be much help. Usually, thinking about my own mortality and the possibility of leaving young children behind is the stuff of my nightmares, but it didn`t feel ghoulish at all to imagine my friends buying cookies for my own (hopefully only imaginery) funeral -- no doubt the fact that yesterday`s funeral was so positive and uplifting had a lot to do with that.
I had a very small window of time after the funeral, in which I had to get my house clean. I almost succeeded -- well, I didn`t get to one of the bathrooms at all (the scuzziest one), so I guess that counts as a failure. But I exhausted myself trying, which must count for something.
For a while, I didn`t think it was really going to happen, but we pulled it off -- we managed to have another Blogging Baby SF meet-up.
I was still madly vacuuming when the hip, cool StefanieJ from Mommymatic arrived, all the way from Salt Lake City. I`d never met her before, and if first impressions count, she will remember me as being drenched in sweat and spastically chasing crumbs and lint balls around my living room.
Ann Adams of Roc Rebel Granny came in from Merced, and Uncle Roger and his lovely wife Rachel and two adorable kids came from a few blocks away. I`ve met them all before, and will hopefully meet them all again, many times.
The only no-show was Hub, who had a big work project to finish, and hadn`t planned on people coming over. He said hello and then vanished.
"I was afraid to talk to people who read your blog," he said to me later. "I have no idea what kind of things you say about me on it."
One, two, three -- all together now:
POOR HUB.
Oh, Hub -- if only you knew....
(UPDATED -- I guessed another possible reason why Hub fled: maybe he just didn`t want his picture taken and posted on the Internet? Photos of the meet-up -- and my house -- posted here:
http://rocrebelgranny.blogspot.com/2006/10/party-time-in-san-francisco-again-part.html and a description here:
http://rocrebelgranny.blogspot.com/2006/10/party-time-in-san-francisco-again-part_16.html
and another description here:
http://mommymatic.blogspot.com/2006/10/in-which-i-wax-all-sentimental-about.html)
Don`t look at me like that -- it really did.
Seriously, when the people at Little Son`s yuppie preschool asked me if I had signed up for a job on its annual "Maintenance Day," the Saturday on which parents come in and do on-site improvements, I told them, "No -- I have to go to my friend`s uncle`s funeral."
The stony silences suggested not everyone believed me, but come on -- I could have thought up a much more believable lie than that. If I were lying I would have said it was my own uncle, at least.
I had expected the funeral to be on the dull side. I had never met the deceased, my friend`s uncle, who was a retired Lutheran minister, and I knew very little about him. I was there to help some of the other moms from our school pick up and arrange some simple food for the reception afterward.
But everything about the service was beautiful and affecting -- the music (which included Latin requiems as well as Norwegian hymns, all sung by a professional quality choir and accompanied by almost the entire church), the building (built just over 100 years ago, before the '06 quake), and most of all, the touching tributes by the people who`d known him:
"...He took me in 39 years ago, when I was a 16-year-old runaway, and changed my life..."
"...He baptized my partner, who was dying of AIDS..."
"...He was the kindest man I ever met."
In fact, I wish I had the chance to come in contact with him before he was a bag of ashes on the alter, but I suppose being in a roomful of people whose lives he touched was the next-best thing.
I admit I know very few details about the modern Lutheran Church -- hey, I can barely keep up with Catholicism, Buddhism and Shinto, the religions various members of my family practice at home.
Oh, I know the basic historical outline of Martin Luther getting himself excommunicated for speaking out against the Roman Catholic Church`s corrupt sale of indulgences, leading to the Protestant Reformation, etc. But there are so many different flavors (synods, whatever) of Lutheranism nowadays that I just can`t keep them all straight.
The deceased guy was obviously not from one of the religion`s conservative factions, because he was one of the founding members of Lutherans Concerned back in 1974 . (I know it sounds funny that I keep calling him "the deceased guy," but I am purposely avoiding mentioning his name here, so that my blog won`t show up in Google searches by people looking for more substantive info on his life and work. If anyone is interested in reading more about him, here is his obit ).
After the service, his ashes were buried under a tile in the church garden.
There was one tiny moment of high tension during the service, when all the people were invited to receive communion. Three of the other moms from our Catholic school were sitting in the pew with me, and we had a very lively whispered, "So should we go up there?" conversation.
I mean, the idea of an all-inclusive, everyone-welcome Eucharist was a pretty radical concept to us "Lord-I-am-not-worthy-to-receive-you" people.
I decided not to go. I don`t receive communion in the Catholic church, for many reasons, so I thought it would feel as if I`d slipped into some weird parallel universe, if I were to receive it in a church that was pretty much its mirror image -- well, except for any mention of the Pope, and a conspicuous absence of any special alters to or statues of the Virgin Mary (they did have a really nice angel statue, though). I was concerned that my abstention would be taken as a lack of respect for the dead, but I figured I should try to be consistent.
In the end, only one out of the seven Catholic moms I knew there went up to receive communion. She said later that it felt like exactly the right thing to do at the time, and joked, "Lightening did not strike me dead."
Almost a year ago, I went with some school mothers to the funeral of another school mom`s father. At the time, I remember thinking how my family had only been living in San Francisco for a few months, and yet there I was, already at a funeral -- this had a funny way of making me feel accepted in our new community.
Yesterday, I had another oddly comforting thought. It occurred to me that if I were to suddenly drop dead, the mothers from our school would probably offer to help poor Hub with all the things he didn`t know about, or understand. They, not him, would decide what kind of cookies to buy for the reception after the service -- all he`d have to think about would be the logistics of getting my ashes back to Japan and scattering them into the Kamo-gawa when the police weren`t looking (or whatever else he wants to do with me -- I am unlikely to give a hoot, either way, at that point). Hub would really need a lot of guidance, if I died, since I have no other family nearby, and since my parents probably wouldn`t be much help. Usually, thinking about my own mortality and the possibility of leaving young children behind is the stuff of my nightmares, but it didn`t feel ghoulish at all to imagine my friends buying cookies for my own (hopefully only imaginery) funeral -- no doubt the fact that yesterday`s funeral was so positive and uplifting had a lot to do with that.
I had a very small window of time after the funeral, in which I had to get my house clean. I almost succeeded -- well, I didn`t get to one of the bathrooms at all (the scuzziest one), so I guess that counts as a failure. But I exhausted myself trying, which must count for something.
For a while, I didn`t think it was really going to happen, but we pulled it off -- we managed to have another Blogging Baby SF meet-up.
I was still madly vacuuming when the hip, cool StefanieJ from Mommymatic arrived, all the way from Salt Lake City. I`d never met her before, and if first impressions count, she will remember me as being drenched in sweat and spastically chasing crumbs and lint balls around my living room.
Ann Adams of Roc Rebel Granny came in from Merced, and Uncle Roger and his lovely wife Rachel and two adorable kids came from a few blocks away. I`ve met them all before, and will hopefully meet them all again, many times.
The only no-show was Hub, who had a big work project to finish, and hadn`t planned on people coming over. He said hello and then vanished.
"I was afraid to talk to people who read your blog," he said to me later. "I have no idea what kind of things you say about me on it."
One, two, three -- all together now:
POOR HUB.
Oh, Hub -- if only you knew....
(UPDATED -- I guessed another possible reason why Hub fled: maybe he just didn`t want his picture taken and posted on the Internet? Photos of the meet-up -- and my house -- posted here:
http://rocrebelgranny.blogspot.com/2006/10/party-time-in-san-francisco-again-part.html and a description here:
http://rocrebelgranny.blogspot.com/2006/10/party-time-in-san-francisco-again-part_16.html
and another description here:
http://mommymatic.blogspot.com/2006/10/in-which-i-wax-all-sentimental-about.html)
posted by L. at 5:20 PM
7 Comments:
And a good time was had by all (except I'm still awake). Going to bed now.
I have two posts up - one with pic. Sent you the links.
What scuzzy bathroom? Do you have one I didn't bee?
The meetup sounds fun.
My husband is also skittish about meeting people who read my blog (although he does read it himself.)
Love the pix!!!
I solemnly swear to learn how to download photos to my blog so at least I can show off the critters ;-)
You have a step tansu!!!!!! I am SOOOOOOOO JEALOUS!!!! I have a number of tansu and stuff and I have always longed for a step tansu and a place to put it. Oh and one of those giant kitchen tansu too--the kind that you can stuff everything into and have instant clean house.
sigh....wish I lived in San Francisco....and by the way, your house is SPARKLY clean compared to ours...more jealousy and a big dose of guilt.
Ohmigosh! Ohmigosh! Ohmigosh! Pictures!!! I never thought I'd see what you look like! You look great! And fun! Exactly the sort of person I would be friends with in real life!
You really are a lovely woman.
C.
Look at you smokin' hott women!!
It's strange but I like funerals, they're the greatest hots albums of each of us. I've already decided mine is going to be on a boat with an open bar and a really good band.
Post a Comment
<< Home