I spent all night at P’ng and Judy’s place. We’re trying to put together a slideshow for Tina’s Funeral this Saturday. Everyone’s been mailing Judy all these photos and I think it’s been pretty hard on Judy – Especially since P’ng has been away at a conference for while.
I’m not looking forward to Saturday. There are going to be too many sad people there. While I try to let people grieve in there own ways, sometimes I just think it’s stupid to cry so much. For me, it’s the same thing as being diagnosed with cancer. What’s to get sad over? The only option you’ve got is to deal with it. Same with death. Sure it’s not pretty. Sure you don’t want it to happen to folks before their time. But it isn’t something you can control.
Anyway, I can’t help thinking also, that this is just the beginning of it all. The longer I live, the more funerals I’m going to go to. It’s just the way it is.
sorry if I’m a cold fish. Maybe it will be different for me when it’s someone super close to me. If it were my wife, for example, I can see myself being devastated to the point of being non-functional, but maybe that’s a special case. or maybe it isn’t
Death has different meaning right now for me than, say, 15 years ago. At that time, it seemed to far away from me and it was not real. Now, it becomes a distinct possibility for your Mom and me. But, death isn’t avoidable. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to renew lives in general. The more important thing is to see “CONTINUATION” of one’s lives through descendants. A kind of yourself imbedded into some one else that have a part of you, good, not-so-good or bad. 🙂
It’s sweet of you to put together the slideshow. Don’t be too hard on yourself about the grieving. I think your feelings about death and your reaction to it changes over time.
I was 22 when the first person I really “knew” passed away. He was one of my roommates at MIT and I didn’t really know him that well (you know, one of these roomies who is friendly, but you don’t really talk or do anything together), but I *did* live with him. He died in a car accident on Rt. 17 between Santa Cruz and the Silicon Valley. For a while I was obsessed with finding the tree he ran into while it was raining whenever we drove to Santa Cruz. I thought I could find it by scrutinizing the bark of each tree as we drove by. Weird, huh?