I am down in the southwest corner of the state, where I have come for tomorrow's funeral for my second stepmother's mother. I'm in my brother's living room, using his laptop ~ awake, as usual, long after everyone else.
Earlier this evening I spent about an hour at the visitation. I had forgotten to take into account that it might be difficult to be in a funeral home.
Lots of family there, people I have known my entire life. I had also forgotten to take into account that everyone would look different to me than they did six months ago. It's not them, of course. It's my vision. It's like looking out at a world populated by aliens. But the alien, I suppose, is me.
It's hard to explain. But my entire orientation has shifted. I stood there making small talk with my lawyer uncle and his son, my lawyer cousin, about the worldwide economic situation, and my cousin acknowledged several times, in deference to my new reality, that we need to keep things in perspective. How would we do that? I wondered to myself. My half-brother is also a lawyer, and I am a lawyer. Maybe if we got all of us into one place, we could figure out what kind of perspective we should have.
After the funeral tomorrow there will be a Methodist church luncheon. The last time I went to an after-the-funeral-luncheon-in-a-rural-church was four years ago, after my third-stepmother died. The church ladies had produced dozens of the most amazing pies and cakes.
Banana cream pies after a funeral. I'm trying to figure out what that might mean. And also the economy. And death, the relentless predator.
I wonder how the people who survived the medieval plagues retained their sanity. I'm betting that it was an elusive commodity.
