Saying goodbye

Today was the funeral for my friend's father. Sometimes life sucks when death becomes apparent.

The funeral was nice. It was a little funny at a point when the pastor explained that his daughter-in-law was the youngest daughter of the deceased. It all clicked for me - the pastor, the pianist, J's hubby - all related. I had met the pianist at Sarah's church when I was visiting, so it was odd to put it all together.

Anyway, Anthony and I were talking afterward and after our co-worker left he looked at me and he said, "It's weird to find out what you went through this way. It sucks." Oh it did suck because so many emotions came flooding back with Dad.

I remember saying to Anthony at our after-funeral-party for Dad, "You just wanted to get out of school." When he said that no, he really wanted to be there, I felt horrible for accusing him of that.

I remember being at the cemetery and the whole family standing in a circle with our arms around each other, laughing and crying at the same time because Dad would have hated it - us making a fuss over him as we were.

I remember sitting with Mom and Lisa talking after the funeral and Mom telling us to pick what we wanted to remember them by right then. Lisa claimed the family pic. I claimed the clock (and mom said, "I thought you'd want the piano." I said, "I thought that was a given.")

I remember being at the funeral home making the decisions that no one thinks they'll have to do for their father when they are only 19 - picking out a casket, picking out hymns, trying to decide about casketbearers...ugh.

I remember that whole freaking weekend - the crying, the stress, the wishing, the hoping, the praying, the lamenting, the decisions we had to make, the total shit of it all.

The beauty of it was that at least I was able to take time to say good bye...sort of. You don't say goodbye when you hope that they will recover. But somehow I knew. I was crying like there was no tomorrow (and in some ways that was true) and Dad, always the caregiver, said, "It'll be okay, honey."

I don't know...sometimes funerals just suck. I believe that we'll all meet again, but the in-between times...well, sometimes they just suck.