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For a quick refresher: http://billthetailor.livejournal.com/37584.html

Joe's funeral was yesterday.  He died a few months into his one-hundredth year.  The last few months of his life, he called every woman close to him by my mother's name.

Joe's funeral was yesterday.  I didn't attend.

We will visit Nebraska this weekend for a visit to the zoo and Valentino's and have some time outside the reach of my day job.  We'll visit Weeping Water and the cemetery, and I'll stop at his grave - it should be easy to find - and feel like weeping.  Not because I'll miss the man, God, no, but because of what his passing represents.  (That's a post for another time.)  My feelings as they include him are some of the most complex in my life.

I don't do endings well.  I never have.  (You can ask Michelle: she was there at what would have been one of the biggest.)

I probably won't actually cry, though.  I don't very often any more.  I see myself gazing at the mound of earth, reading the name inscribed on the stone (but not the date...there won't have been enough time for that) and turning away without comment. 

I will walk from there to my paternal grandparents' graves, then the long trek uphill across the graveyard to my maternal grandparents and great-grandparents, assorted uncles and great uncles and great great uncles, then down the other side to David's and our parents' graves.   I'll probably be carrying a video camera.  It's what I do.

Joe's funeral was yesterday. 

It didn't occur to me - even for a moment - that I would attend. 

Comments

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

Thinking about you...

Enjoy the zoo with your wife and children. They are what is important right now.