Grandpa's funeral was on Saturday. It kind of fits if you knew him. Crazy relatives were present in abundance.
So, I've decided that what I only knew in theory before is actually true; grief is different each time you experience it. So, not only is our condition impossible because we can't understand each other but also because we can't even understand ourselves.
I'm sorry if you've been trying to reach me. I've been really good at responding to emails and really terrible about responding to phone calls. And I'm sorry in advance if I don't write on here for awhile. I'm finding that everything grates on me a bit. I do appreciate all your calls and emails, though. Don't feel like it's that I don't appreciate you. I'm just feeling kinda... raw... or bruised.
And I didn't read a single book in March, so I won't be posting a book list this month, either.
Posted by LoWriter at April 4, 2006 08:57 AMI don't know if there is something wrong with me but I kind of like funerals. I hate death but like funerals because of all the relatives that show up. When my grandpa died, people came out of the woodwork to go to the funeral. Granted it was incredibly sad and I balled my eyes out but I left the reception that day feeling better. The story time at the reception (the meal thing after the burial) gave everyone there a chance to reconnect with each other. In a sense we reconnected to the living through the dead.
Posted by: jeff at April 4, 2006 09:46 AMI felt more that way (that the dead help us connect with the living)at this funeral than I did at the last one I went to even though this one was set up so that we had the lunch and then we went for the burial (the cemetary was too wet and too far away from the church, so they wanted it to be just family).
After this experience, I have determined that funerals are there to exhaust you to the point of wanting to put the death behind you. By the time you get through the funeral, you feel as though you have to have some closure. I personally think that the weeks after the funeral are some of the hardest. You're not with the fam anymore and everybody starts demanding things from you again and says things like, "Life doesn't just end you know" despite all evidence to the contrary (i.e. Life does just end. It did just end. That's the problem. A life ended.). People expect you to pick up right where you left off even though you don't feel like it and maybe will never feel like it-- might never feel like picking up some of the threads you were following ever again. People resist the fact that someone's death might just possibly change you.
Posted by: Lo at April 4, 2006 03:28 PM