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Nov. 19th, 2004 01:16 amInstead of directly replying to everyone who wished my family and I well and offered their condolences, I'm posting a group reply here. Thank you all for thinking of us during this extremely difficult period. All the help and compassion I have received over the past three years has helped me more than any of you could possibly know. I could never express my graditude fully, not in a thousand years.
The funeral service, which I had been semi-dreading, went rather smoothly. My mother had wanted a bagpipe player at her funeral, but since there is no graveside (she wanted to be cremated), I felt that bagpipes + indoors = not very cool on everyone's ears. Instead, Rowan lent me a CD of bagpipe music and that was played during the hour before the chaplain spoke. After Chaplain Ted (who rocks, let me tell you) did his thing (he mentioned how my mother was infamous for taking in strays, human and animal, which garnered a wave of giggling from those in attendance, many of them the strays in question), two songs were played. "Hallelujah", by John Cale and "American Pie", by Don McLean. I had originally wanted to play "Lady Magdalene", by Neil Diamond, as that was my mother's favourite song. But, I couldn't locate it anywhere on this planet. Instead, I picked two of her other favourite songs, ones that she and I sung during car rides.
So many people came to pay their respects, there were hardly any seats left and people had to stand. I was truly amazed. After the service, we stuffed about 15 of my friends into my tiny little apartment and drank in her honour. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of shit talk, and a lot of love.
Right now, I am hanging in there (as I said to Pixie in a reply on her own journal). I've been sick since yesterday morning with some form of the plague and have thusly doped myself to oblivion with NyQuil.
Everything feels rather surreal right now, which I am told is a completely normal feeling. The surreal feeling is increased with me being sick and wanting nothing more than my mother to comfort me, something she always did, no matter how sick she was feeling herself. I keep briefly forgetting that she is actually gone, only to be reminded when my brain struggles its way out of hiding. It's hard.
On Saturday, the Engineer and I had gone to Target to pick up some things I needed. All of the holiday food presents (like those packaged coffees and chocolates and suchlike) had been put out and since the two of us have some sort of sick fascination with those things, we were looking them over.
My mother was a great fan of the chocolate-covered cherry. If you know anything of the chocolate-covered cherry, you recognize the fact that there are two specific kinds. One of them has a cream-type filling and the other, liquid. Mom loved the liquid kind, but she also preferred dark chocolate (as do I). The liquid cherries were never offered in dark chocolate and every year, I would scour the stores for her, looking for them. Never found them and we were convinced they were just not made.
So, this Saturday I'm standing in Target and staring at a candy display. And what do I find? Dark chocolate-covered cherries. The liquid kind. I had already been kind of weird that day, still feeling very raw from her passing, and here were these candies in front of me that I had never been able to find for her, the day after she died.
That moment is so very typical of my life.
I chose to laugh about it, because I knew she would have laughed about it, too.
The funeral service, which I had been semi-dreading, went rather smoothly. My mother had wanted a bagpipe player at her funeral, but since there is no graveside (she wanted to be cremated), I felt that bagpipes + indoors = not very cool on everyone's ears. Instead, Rowan lent me a CD of bagpipe music and that was played during the hour before the chaplain spoke. After Chaplain Ted (who rocks, let me tell you) did his thing (he mentioned how my mother was infamous for taking in strays, human and animal, which garnered a wave of giggling from those in attendance, many of them the strays in question), two songs were played. "Hallelujah", by John Cale and "American Pie", by Don McLean. I had originally wanted to play "Lady Magdalene", by Neil Diamond, as that was my mother's favourite song. But, I couldn't locate it anywhere on this planet. Instead, I picked two of her other favourite songs, ones that she and I sung during car rides.
So many people came to pay their respects, there were hardly any seats left and people had to stand. I was truly amazed. After the service, we stuffed about 15 of my friends into my tiny little apartment and drank in her honour. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of shit talk, and a lot of love.
Right now, I am hanging in there (as I said to Pixie in a reply on her own journal). I've been sick since yesterday morning with some form of the plague and have thusly doped myself to oblivion with NyQuil.
Everything feels rather surreal right now, which I am told is a completely normal feeling. The surreal feeling is increased with me being sick and wanting nothing more than my mother to comfort me, something she always did, no matter how sick she was feeling herself. I keep briefly forgetting that she is actually gone, only to be reminded when my brain struggles its way out of hiding. It's hard.
On Saturday, the Engineer and I had gone to Target to pick up some things I needed. All of the holiday food presents (like those packaged coffees and chocolates and suchlike) had been put out and since the two of us have some sort of sick fascination with those things, we were looking them over.
My mother was a great fan of the chocolate-covered cherry. If you know anything of the chocolate-covered cherry, you recognize the fact that there are two specific kinds. One of them has a cream-type filling and the other, liquid. Mom loved the liquid kind, but she also preferred dark chocolate (as do I). The liquid cherries were never offered in dark chocolate and every year, I would scour the stores for her, looking for them. Never found them and we were convinced they were just not made.
So, this Saturday I'm standing in Target and staring at a candy display. And what do I find? Dark chocolate-covered cherries. The liquid kind. I had already been kind of weird that day, still feeling very raw from her passing, and here were these candies in front of me that I had never been able to find for her, the day after she died.
That moment is so very typical of my life.
I chose to laugh about it, because I knew she would have laughed about it, too.
