Doing it for Demeter - Part Three

Demeter was advanced in years when she died, and made quite extensive notes about twenty years ago about her memorial service preferences.  It was a time when she was attending lots of memorial services at her church, and it must have been frequently on her mind.

As a result, it was much upon my mind as well, as she mailed documents and poems to our house in Hades.  I often thought fleetingly about what I might say at her memorial, and imagined it would be about my loss and how each of us loses a different person when a particular loved one dies, because we're all multifaceted in our relationships - never the same person to those around us.

I wrote about this in my blog a decade ago, when I attended the memorial of a friend's husband, and wondered at the varied perceptions of him, reflected in the testimonials. Which one was accurate?  All of them, in a way.

As it turned out, I, as the eldest child, was assigned Demeter's eulogy, and that's a different business, because it meant I had to tell my mother's life story in ten minutes, which didn't leave much room for going on about my own particular sense of loss.

I was actually pretty grateful for that.  I was also grateful for what I'd learned from being a hospice volunteer, and making family history presentations for BIFHSGO.

Hospice taught me many things, but chiefly, that grief may be universal, but it is not, by any means, identical, and varies wildly even within a single human experience.  I didn't journal at all in the week preceding and following my mother's death.  When my entries resumed, they contained a certain amount of sorrow, guilt, and rage -- not always, and not always at the same time.  Fortunately, I knew this was not abnormal, because a tenet at Hospice was:  "Anger is a secondary emotion."  

The primary emotion isn't always grief -- but it often is.

Doing presentations for a family history society is good preparation for taking on a eulogy.  You have to be organised, clear, reasonably entertaining, and accurate.  

But not too accurate.  That's why they call it a "eulogy".

So, just as I had for my presentations, I wrote in chunks, edited, and reshaped.  I read it out loud to myself, and timed it.  I pushed aside the rage and irritation, knowing it was the grief talking, and repeated to myself:  "I'm doing this for Demeter."

The rage and irritation was, of course, largely a result of how Double Leo Sister was manifesting her own grief, i.e. almost frantic over-busyness, not only wanting to run most of the memorial service, but fretting about emptying and cleaning up Demeter's condo.  (Demeter owned her condo outright, and there is no deadline to vacate it.)

DLS was anxious to bring friends with her from her up-Island community to help with the condo-clearing, friends whom I don't know, and who did not know our mother.

"You've done so much already; we want to take some of the burden off you," DLS declared.

I kept my retorts to myself.  I was doing this for Demeter.

I engaged in defensive condo-clearing ahead of my sister's arrival for the memorial service.  I knew I couldn't sort through everything on my own, but I had some idea of where Demeter's private and personal stuff -- her toiletries, her journals -- were stashed, and went in for ninety-minute sessions to dispose of some items and to ferry others out of the reach of relative strangers.  It made me feel better, anyway.

And I hit pay dirt.  Not only did I find photos, documents, and keepsakes that brought my mother's life more sharply into focus, but I found the Once Upon a Lifetime workbook, and an accompanying notebook - two items for which I'd been searching diligently since Demeter's death.

Still available online!

Back when I had two really young children, I had somehow snatched an opportunity to browse at Bolen Books one afternoon, when this item caught my eye. I believe I gave it to Demeter as a Mother's Day present. I was not prepared for how seriously she took it.

She meticulously answered each question (except for the military section - she didn't serve) over the next few years, using, as suggested, a supplementary notebook in order to go into detail.  She added and updated over the next decade.

I now had a tool to help me step away from myself and my perceptions, and steer the eulogy towards what she thought was important.  At least I hope I did.  She would have had some feedback and corrections.  Fair enough.  It's her story.

Delivering the eulogy promised an extra benefit.  My part would be first, after the minister's introduction and the lighting of the chalice.

So, I found myself, sitting in the front row of the sanctuary, listening to the pianist play "Suo Gan", and for the first time since my mother died, suddenly feeling overcome.  

I sternly put my tears aside.

I'm doing this for Demeter, I thought.

Swimming while sitting down

They've been experimenting with the occasional "light classical" playlist at the coffeehouse, a bit of a break from the boomer tunes, and nineties nostalgia. I half-listen while I work at "my" table, having stolen it back from another interloper in my bid to become The Coffeehouse Crank -- I have quite a bit of competition for that title. 

 I slowly become aware of the piece that's currently playing:

  

When I was very little, my mother would play classical music, the "programme" type, because she knew I loved stories; although I would add my own stories to the music, if none were available.

A favourite was Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of Animals (1886), for obvious reasons.  My mum would read out the comic verses that accompany each animal, composed by Ogden Nash in the late 1940s:

The swan can swim while sitting down/ For pure conceit he takes the crown.

He looks in the mirror, over and over/ And claims to have never heard of Pavlova.

Being four, my reaction was immediate and indignant:  "Mummy! Stop laughing!  The swan is sad!"

Now, I'm the one who's sad.

The music plays on.  She's everywhere and inextricably within.  Someday, this will be a comfort.

Earring aid

She's one of the incoming summer wave of new baristas at my coffee shop.  She's very young, and statuesque -- and she likes my earrings, which are creamy ovals with lavender cloisonné flowers at the centres.

I tell her my mother bought me a pair years ago, and I loved them so much that they fell apart, and after my mother died, I silently asked her permission, and squirrelled her slightly different variation of the earrings away, wearing them to her memorial service for good luck.

I must have made an impression, because 90 minutes later, when I'm dropping off my coffee cup at the rear sink, she asks my name, and in return, I ask her hers.  It's Tamsin, though she has to repeat it -- I fancy I hear the narrowed vowels of a New Zealand accent, which somehow remind me of cone-shaped tubes.

"Tamsin!" I exclaim.  "That's the female form of Thomas!  I've always liked that name!"

She tells me her sister had a room-mate named Thompson.

"Tamsin and Thompson?  How confusing for your sister!"  I hastily add:  "She probably recognised you, though!" 

It's probably time for me to go.

I'm pretty sure the staff is encouraged to address regulars by name, but I feel seen all the same.  It's rather nice.

Sic transit gloria mundane

Screen capture from TheKenContinuum YouTube video - May 16

I picked up a new habit during the past year.  Riding buses and walking.  Virtually.

It started with the YouTube videos of Wanderizm and Walk From Home.  I'm pretty sure they're the same person, or at least working in tandem.  Their graphics are the same.

Wanderizm features (mostly) double-decker bus rides in the Greater London area, although she/he (I think it's a she, but it may be a they) takes the occasional stroll.  Walk from Home (whom I'm pretty sure is a she - I've seen her shadow), like Wanderizm, makes unnarrated journeys throughout London neighbourhoods, and parks, but on foot, of course.  

I think the idea is that you can pretend you're the one strolling or perched in the front seat atop a double-decker.  It's the certainly the attraction for me.  Sometimes, I pull a chair to within a few feet of our bigscreen television to assist the illusion of actually being there. 

Oh, don't look at me like that.

I love the quotidian aspect of it: students returning from school, parents dropping off kids, people striding to work. A large section of my heart is in London, now that elder daughter has made it her home for over half a decade.  I take virtual trips near her flat and work, and scan the surroundings hopefully.  Haven't spotted her yet.

Also, a chunk of my family history and that of the Resident Fan Boy is in London, so I explore those neighbourhoods too.

It's oddly addictive.  The videographers sell the "ambient" aspect of it, possibly with ASMR in mind. No tingling for me, I'm afraid.

While never tiring of London - in keeping with Samuel Johnson's view - I have ventured elsewhere, exploring cities I've never visited, such as Amsterdam and New York.

However, I've been particularly drawn to a city in which I have lived -- Toronto.

YouTube has two notable videographers who march around Toronto (or cycle, or take transit), and they've become celebrities, judging from the greetings they get from passers-by:  Johnny Strides and The Ken Continuum.  I'd say they're thirty-somethings, and they're so Canadian, they make me giggle.

Unlike their British counterparts, they provide a running commentary, including what they know (or guess) about the city's history, and snide comments on sidewalk cyclists, and bad driving.

Recently, I was taking a virtual stroll with "KenContinuum" along Broadview Avenue in Toronto, as crowds gathered to watch the sunset at Riverdale Park East, sitting on the grounds that slope toward the Don River on a Victoria Day long weekend.  Apparently, this is a year-round thing.  I'd never heard of this, but I only lived in Toronto for the first year of my marriage, and my observation at that time was that no matter how obscure the niche or interest, you could usually count on a good turn-out, and sunset-watching is hardly an obscure pastime.

This crowd was mostly young and diverse - lot of parents with young kids, and couples on dates.

"The Ken Continuum" eventually wheeled around and headed into the gathering dark, past the old Don Jail, through the Riverside neighbourhood, the eastern end of Toronto's Chinatown, and eventually into the Regent's Park area.

Regent's Park??? I thought. At night?  Is he nuts?

I was a home support worker, while the Resident Fan Boy finished law school at U of T, and my heart would sink when I was assigned Regent's Park -- a grim and impoverished maze of old apartment blocks.  As he walked, "The Ken Continuum's" running commentary included a mention of Regent's Park's old "dodgy reputation". It's now largely rebuilt - apparently with a few grimy remnants to the north - and is a patchwork of new buildings, new shops, lots of green space and recreational areas, including an aquatic centre, glowing in the dusk.

I watch these virtual walks with a gentle pull of nostalgia, but the Toronto I remember is largely gone.  The memories are a young woman's memories.  That bus has departed.  I decided to step out into the evening of my own neighbourhood for a stroll.  I didn't record it. 

Even in the midst of life

It seems when you're in love, all songs are about love, and when your heart is broken, all songs are about lost dreams.  When you have children, the songs you hear echo all the feelings you feel.

And then there are times like these, when lyrics bite into me, yet provide hope and a odd sort of comfort.

 

Did you know these were Roger Ebert’s dying words?

It’s all an elaborate hoax

He looked ever peaceful/ He looked ever young 

Accepting his moment that soon would be done 

He wrote in a note/That he passed to his wife /As he felt him shedding the skin of this life 

It said "There is a vastness that can’t be contained /Or described as a thought in the flesh of our brain 

It’s everything, everywhere, future and past /Dissolving forever in an eternal flash "

 

Worth no words to say that he loved her so much/ His hands seems to pass through whatever it touched/ And the credits that rolled listed all of God’s names /As images floated away from their frames 

 Did you know these were Roger Ebert’s dying words? 

 It’s all an elaborate hoax

- "Roger Ebert" by Clem Snide

Doing it for Demeter - Part Two

There is a certain amount of power struggle in all family occasions, but particularly in the events and ceremonies surrounding a death.  Grief is a very personal thing, and people tend to assert ownership:  who has suffered the greatest lost, where one is in the hierarchy of mourning, all exacerbated by emotional intensity.

In my years as a hospice volunteer, I often had a front-row seat to this.  I remember puttering in the small open-plan kitchen at Victoria Hospice one late winter's afternoon, when two warring factions of a soon-to-be-bereaved family exploded into confrontation in the lobby.  I froze, and don't remember if I had the presence of mind to run to alert the staff, but they would have heard the shouting anyway.

I was determined to avoid similar scenes in the weeks leading up to my mother's memorial service, knowing how much it would have upset Demeter -- and knowing how easy it might be to trip the wire.

It didn't take my non-existent powers of prophecy to predict that Double Leo Sister would want to run the show.  I am, after all, a survivor of both her weddings, both ambitious pageants with items, displays, performances, and minute details being continually added, up until the last possible minute.

This means I was not particularly surprised when DLS didn't log in to the ZOOM meeting for planning the service with the minister.  She said she slept through it:  "I've been through a lot."

The minister forwarded transcripts of the meeting to her with handy-dandy ways to add comments and annotations; DLS said she'd been "denied access to the files".

To be fair, she's always had a deep distrust of (and impatience with) computers, ironic, given how important they are in the lives of the men in her life, two Zoomer sons and a husband in IT.  Even before the internet took over, she had a self-proclaimed phobia of paper.  This was her justification for never responding to letters, and must have made record-keeping for her work a nightmare.

As someone who's known her since her birth, I'd say she simply doesn't want to be pinned down, but I'm hardly an objective witness.

Her computer-literate husband and younger son eventually ironed out the "denied access", after I'd copied and pasted notes to send through email.  I tried to explain that the church group for Demeter's neighbourhood would, by tradition, being organising the food.  She told me she would provide the food -- just as she had done for her best friend's memorial service, which she had put together during the pandemic.  

By this time, seventy people were expected, so I quietly made arrangements with the volunteers anyway, most of whom I knew from my own days with the church, which DLS had left as a teenager.

My mantra became I'm doing this for Demeter.  I said it under my breath and repetitively.

DLS was now heavily involved in designing display tables for the reception, which she hoped to use as a conversation "activity", to "get people involved".  

I decided not to say that, at late afternoon on Valentine's Day, those people kind enough to show up would probably want to go home, and set about my most pressing duty -- writing the eulogy.

And someone paved me over

Stephen Colbert went out with a bang.

It seems ever since the announcement last summer that CBS had decided to pull another Smothers Brothers-type smother (saying it was for financial reasons, of course), the Late Show has been steadily inching off the rails, getting crazier, and more defiant as the remaining weeks wained.

As a result, I was almost hesitant to watch last night's finale. 

However, Colbert's previous gig The Daily Show posted a video of Colbert's "funniest moments" - which indicated that Colbert has a history of being a bit off the rails in terms of his humour: ribald, outrageous, and darkly satiric. (Also scatological and quite a bit off-colour.) 

I must have missed most of this because I had young children at the time.

The last Late Show was pretty damn surreal, featuring a stream of celebrity interruptions, a last-minute "cancellation" by the Pope, and a surprise interview with Paul McCartney.  This last item was pleasant enough, but I felt a dropping in the pit of my belly, as I saw Sir Paul reach out to the host's desk for balance as he made his way to his seat.  (McCartney turns 84 next month.)

After a couple of ominous green flashes, accompanied by rumbles and static, everything and everyone got sucked up into a wormhole.  Colbert got spat out into a dark room with a tumbled chair and a ghost light. 

He began singing, accompanied by Elvis Costello, former Late Show music director Jon Baptiste, and current Late Show band leader Louis Cato.  It was a song that sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.  It turns out to be "Jump Up", a rather obscure ditty by Costello, that's nearly fifty years old. 

I much prefer the Late Show version; they should record it.

For a grand finale, Paul McCartney lead everyone in "Hello/Goodbye" - including the Late Show staff and Colbert's family.   Really appropriate. 

Then they went for a bit of a St Elsewhere ending.  Also quite appropriate.

I'm posting a Late Show YouTube video of those two closing songs, but you'd probably better watch --before CBS smothers it.

Everybody's talking like they can't sit down/ And looking like they can't stand up/It must be the latest style/ And they've seen a lot of things that you never see/ Back on the mile up to the hanging tree

Some people can't keep their fingers clean/ Just clicking their heels to the beat of the scene/ Trying to keep current until the first edition of last night's obituaries

Jump up, hold on tight/ Can't trust a promise or a guarantee/ 'Cause the man 'round the curve says that he's never heard of you or me

No tombstone would ever surprise me /When I'm locked in a room about half the size of a matchbox/ Got holes in my socks/ They match the holes that I got in my feet/ I put my feet in the holes in the street/ And someone paved me over

I was a statue standing on the corner/ Tell me, how else can a boy get to see those pretty pleats?

Candidate talking on the radio from the "Cheaters Jamboree"/ It must be their latest fool/ 'Cause it's a two-horse race, and he changes bets/ Like it was just another brand of cigarettes

Some people judge, then they just guess the rest/ They can't understand, it don't mean that you're blessed/ They oughta catch the express, next stop nowhere/ That way you can't forget

Doing it for Demeter - Part One

Memorial services have more in common with weddings than you might think.  

There's food and flowers, speeches, the complexity of dealing with family politics, and the minefield of other people's feelings - with the added complication of planning all this while in a state of grief.  (In our case, because of the size of the sanctuary, there were also RSVPs, which took some delicate explaining.)

Four months after my mother's departure, I'd like to write about Demeter's memorial service - probably in a few parts - mainly because it's far less painful than writing about her death, especially the week leading up to it.  This is a shame, because I know from experience that the details of anything in life, even events you think you'll never forget, get lost to time (and everyone will remember it differently, anyway) - which makes me want to make notes in self-defense.  

But I can't face it. Images ambush me upon waking in the middle of the night, or moving through my day. Maybe I can write about my mother's death in a year or two.

But Demeter's memorial service went well, considering. 

We got pretty good reviews.  And I didn't kill anyone.

I knew Demeter wanted a memorial.  She'd left detailed notes.  Not out of self-aggrandisement, which wasn't Demeter's style at all, but out of the belief that funerals and memorial services are a great help in grieving and healing.  She left a great deal of leeway in what we could do, because she understood that death rituals are for the living, but left suggestions to ease our decisions.

Because she'd been a long-time contributing member of her church, we had the benefit of having the church and minister, with little in the way of fees.  

The date was settled quickly, because our American cousin was anxious to attend in person, and of the dates made available by the church, Valentine's Day worked, for all concerned.

That meant I had to compose an obituary.  Obituaries are eye-wateringly expensive.  I figure the reason that grieving families go for the term essays is that if you're skipping a service - usually at the deceased person's request, I hasten to add - you can better afford to fork out hundreds of dollars.  (Come to think of it, "no service by request of the deceased" is kinda like an elopement, isn't it?  That is, if we're sticking with the memorial service/wedding comparison.  We don't have to.)

We were having a service, so I went for economics and brevity, thinking about what I look for in an obit (particularly as a family researcher), i.e. confirmation that, yes, this is indeed the person you thought it might be.

I composed a briefish three paragraphs (still damned expensive) saying where Demeter had been born, where she had grown up, where she had worked, and the names of her immediate family.  This information also supplied the three surnames she'd used over the course of nearly ten decades: her maiden name, her married name, and the name she chose for herself for the final third of her life. The all-important date and place of the service.  Demeter was convinced, in her final years, that no one would come, probably because so many of her friends had predeceased her.  (She was wrong.)

I should have splurged, and added "No flowers, please".  I didn't think we'd get any.  (I was wrong.)

The challenging bits came next.

I'll have a think, marshal what compassion and diplomacy I possess - don't laugh - and get back to you, okay?

Suggestive sidewalk

I was shaking off the grogginess of the afternoon by strolling over to Demeter's building to pick up the mail.

When I noticed the instructions on the sidewalk.

I'm very suggestible.

So I jumped, tiptoed, swerved, popped, and balanced. 

 Within reason. 

 For no reason.

A child flew past me riding in a star

This turned up on my "Liked Songs" on Spotify this morning, while I working on something else. 

 I must have "liked" it ages ago. 

 I don't recognise it. 

 But I like it.

There once was a note pure and easy/ Playing so free like a breath rippling by/ The note is eternal I hear it, it sees me/ Forever we blend as forever we die  

I listened and I heard music in a word/ And words when you played your guitar/ The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering/ And a child flew past me riding in a star

As people assemble/ Civilization is trying to find a new way to die/ But killing is really merely scene-changing/ All men are bored with other men's lives

We all know success when we all find our own dream/ And our love is enough to knock down any wall/ And the future's been seen as men try to realize/ The simple secret of the note in us all