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?

Making better choices

Apparently whoever has been in charge of the social media for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation is moving on. Judging from this tweet, which has ruled my week, they will be sorely missed.

 

Fixing my little red wagon

This is, I believe, my eighth NaBloPoMo, and for seven of the eight months covered, I've gone wading through my old diaries to look at that particular month over the years of my misspent life. (Couldn't do August because I was in Victoria at the time, and my diaries were in Hades.) It's a surprisingly depressing exercise, because although I do stumble across happy memories, I also run smack into unpleasant ones, and frankly, that just makes the loss of the happier times sting more. However, I'm nothing if not slightly obsessive-compulsive, so I hauled out the dusty beaten notebooks to go through past Mays.

May has always been a problematic month for me, since I associate it with struggling to be ready for the summer and always falling short. When I was in school, it meant leaving the safety of the known for the unknown. It wasn't that I was particularly happy in any given grade, it was just...I'd gotten used to it, y'know? When I was in university, it meant my courses were over and now I was faced with the task of trying to get a summer job. Now, it's a case of setting up stuff for younger daughter, and never feeling I'm getting it right.

Strolling through those past Mays, I did find points of light:  younger daughter was honoured at district-wide school awards ceremony when she was seven; elder daughter was identified as gifted in a long-past May.  (Actually, the second item was a double-edged sword in the long-run, but how lovely to hear only positive things from a developmental psychologist!)  Most Mays, though, were just darn stressful.

I'm thinking in particular of the May just before the Resident Fan Boy got hired by the federal government.  He had been let go from a small private law firm the previous September and in fact, went in to apply for Unemployment Insurance benefits six hours after seeing his dead mother in her hospital bed.  Eight months of uncertainty followed.  We had just taken on a mortgage, of course, (no kids as yet, thank goodness) and I was midway through a part-time Master's degree.  Each month, we waited for the UI payments to be cut off, while I got what sub-teaching and short-term contracts I could.  By May, the RFB was in despair, and I was struggling to stay afloat emotionally and spiritually.  I attended Quaker meetings and was working myself through the Ira Progoff books on journalling, which included the concept of the seven-syllable mantra.  So I found myself writing way more revelatory diary entries than usual (frankly, I squirm a bit re-reading them) and making up seven-syllable meditations such as: "waiting for the fog to lift", "fork in the road will appear" and rather less obvious, "steps go down to the water" (from a school memory -- I was looking for meaning anywhere).

I was also listening to Jane Siberry, and her latest album at that time was Bound by the Beauty which included a song called "The Life is a Red Wagon" which seemed to fit just what the Resident Fan Boy and I were going through.  With a start, I realized that the title contained seven syllables.  A few weeks later, the long agonizing wait ended with the Resident Fan Boy's new job -- which eventually took us to Hades.

Watching the video so many years later, I'm startled to recognize younger daughter's face and mannerisms in Jane Siberry's performance.  Maybe there's meaning in that.

Maybe not.



You watch the slow train moving through the city late at night
adjusting back and forth against the darkness and street lights
I know that you're feeling bad but I'm glad you didn't lie
easy to get caught up...but you know,
you can always you can always
you can always walk away

the life is the red wagon rolling along
the life is the red wagon simple and strong
the life is the red...is the red...oh, it's no big deal
but when the feet are draggin'
Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh...
you pull for me
and I pull for you

past the teeming marketplace and the blur of faces there
past the silent dockyards and the darkness looming there
maybe it won't work this time but that's the risk you take (and you want to
take it)
and just as long as it feels right doesn't matter
just as long as...doesn't matter
gotta feel good even though you don't know why