continuing on...
Apr. 25th, 2008 05:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashYesterday, we ran around doing something like 90% of the funeral prep. Luckily Grandma had taken out a couple of insurance policies for the express purpose of paying for the funeral; we went to the funeral home and pretty much just ran down the list of stuff she'd chosen, nodded, and signed the contract. The whole thing's already paid for and the home didn't try to upsell us on anything. This is one of the few things Mina ever did to make our lives easier.
Then we went to get me some shoes for the ceremonies - I just don't own anything appropriate for this kind of thing; I have some ugly sneakers and a pair of sandals that's going to fall apart soon. We ended up at Payless where I found some serviceable black pumps, and a pair of sneakers that was right on the border between 'hideous' and 'amazing'. Although we also discovered that I have some expensive taste; we'd checked out a new shoe store in the area first, whose prices ranged from $150 to $400. Guess which end of their price range I actually liked... but, you know, if I pay that much for something that's going to go on my feet, I expect it to be that costly because I sat down with the shoemaker and threw some sketches back and forth, and had it made for my feet!
Tomorrow is the funeral; I'm really not looking forward to that. A whole morning of standing around nodding and smiling at other people's expressions of sympathy, then watching the corpse-box get closed and put in another sealed box - what the fuck is up with our cultural denial of decomposition, anyway?
Monday is a visit with Jason and Jennie, and then Tuesday is transit. And then I can get back to work.
edit: ...and back to a normal sleep schedule because waking up before the sun sucks.
Then we went to get me some shoes for the ceremonies - I just don't own anything appropriate for this kind of thing; I have some ugly sneakers and a pair of sandals that's going to fall apart soon. We ended up at Payless where I found some serviceable black pumps, and a pair of sneakers that was right on the border between 'hideous' and 'amazing'. Although we also discovered that I have some expensive taste; we'd checked out a new shoe store in the area first, whose prices ranged from $150 to $400. Guess which end of their price range I actually liked... but, you know, if I pay that much for something that's going to go on my feet, I expect it to be that costly because I sat down with the shoemaker and threw some sketches back and forth, and had it made for my feet!
Tomorrow is the funeral; I'm really not looking forward to that. A whole morning of standing around nodding and smiling at other people's expressions of sympathy, then watching the corpse-box get closed and put in another sealed box - what the fuck is up with our cultural denial of decomposition, anyway?
Monday is a visit with Jason and Jennie, and then Tuesday is transit. And then I can get back to work.
edit: ...and back to a normal sleep schedule because waking up before the sun sucks.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 05:26 pm (UTC)I've never been to a funeral yet. Only two folks have died who were close enough to me for me to do so; one, I avoided because it would have turned into a chance for extended family to ask what the fuck I was, and the other was an immediate-family-affair so I didn't have the chance. It's... not something I really look forward to anyhow. It's not the way I grieve, y'know?
And yes, waking up before the sun is truly abominable. I roomed with a friend at All Fur Fun, and he insisted on closing the drapes so the sun wouldn't wake us up. What the hell else is it for?
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 07:04 pm (UTC)Ended up getting him a rather substantial one nonetheless, he died so sudden we didn't have time for anything else.
I remember that the visitation was more irritating than anything, three days of me and my family tooling around keeping up appearances, though the show of support was rather amazing by some folks; my entire elementary class from that year appeared, as did two of my teachers.
You're absolutely right about people standing around, nodding and smiling. Traditional western funerals are expensive, cumbersome, tradition-laden beasts of burden, usually that burden placed squarely on the shoulders of the bereaved.
We should work on that.