Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 February 2006 12:05:26
Well, four wedding invitations, anyway.
My father-in-law passed away (peacefully, in a hospice and with his family around him), two Fridays ago. He was 59, which seems unfairly young.
We sorted out the funeral and then spent three days skiing, which seemed bizarre, but there wasn't that much more to do, and tons of people to do it, and it was good for the people we were going with to have us there for a bit.
I sang at the funeral, on Friday - Durufle's Notre Pere - and cried my little eyes out the rest of the time. I've known my father-in-law since I was 15, and my in-laws are some of my parent's best friends. He was a lovely man - ill for such a long time that it seemed a blessed release in some ways, but he fought it all the way.
I had forgotten how a funeral brings out the worst in some people. It is difficult to say the right thing of course, but how could the appropriate response to the comment "Dad always wanted to be buried" ever be "Super!"? Likewise, the sombre trip from the house to the church in the funeral cars was somewhat marred by Mr Fishsoup's auntie accosting the grieving widow with a barrage of questions about why the roads were so terrible.
Surreal stuff.
Cakes and casseroles are now eaten (is that what's meant by "funeral baked meats"?) life must return to normal for at least some of us. For my mother-in-law, of course, it can't.
The reading at the funeral was the bit from Revelation about there being no more death or sorrow or crying, for the former things have passed away. I guess that's the only comfort the family have right now.