Wedding and funerals. Funerals and weddings. The two times families gather together and they are always laden with emotion, with angst, with joy and sorrow. Sometimes all at the same time! Some weddings are angst-ridden, especially if the bride or groom is on someone's shitlist. Some funerals are almost joyful, especially if 1) the dead person was someone no one liked or 2) the dead person died well and was ready to go or 3) the dead person left a note to have really good booze available. So weddings and funerals, they can go either way.
But weddings are easier to ignore, especially if you can invent a good excuse, of course. (Emergency root canals can work, as can sick children, although that is tempting fate.) Weddings come and go: the bride is a flake and will divorce and get remarried in 5 years, the groom is a filanderer and will have 3 wives within 12 years, you know how that goes. Often there will be another wedding with the same cast of characters. Wait for the second one.
Funerals, on the other hand, are obviously more finite. No one gets funeralized more than once. No one gets cremated or buried more than once unless that person is living in a TV crime show. So missing the funeral is a bit more serious. It's a one-shot thing.
We go to funerals out of respect for the family or out of guilt or because of grief, of because of all of the above.
Funerals carry their own emotional baggage, of course. In the case of the funeral we attended this past week, it was my Aunt's time to go, she was ready, so there was sadness but not a lot of grief. She was our favorite Aunt, always happy, always made us laugh. We went out of respect for her kids (our cousins) and out of respect for my Dad. Aunt Anne was the last of the Turmes kids, the youngest of 8 children.
But attending these rituals always brings us into contact with people we haven't seen in a long time. Sometimes we remember their faces but need to be reminded of their names. Sometimes we know the names but can't find the face to put with that name because the person looks so different than they looked 20 years ago, and we experience a different kind of disconnect. And seeing all those faces and remembering all those names dredges up so many memories. Some good, some bad, some creepy, some puzzling. All families have history and history is never all positive or negative. There are so many cloudy memory impressions: making ice cream on a hot day, running through the sprinklers on the front lawn, someone crying in the other room, watching fireworks on a warm night, angry voices behind a bedroom door, the sound of glass breaking on concrete, the whisper of uncertainty, of fear, the jump of joy in a voice, cigarette smoke curling around a lamp.
We were at the funeral and reception for my Aunt in Los Angeles for a shade over three hours. But it was a long, quiet ride home. The three of us, me, Steve, Kate each had our own thoughts, and in the Turmes tradition, we didn't share them with each other. We might do so in the weeks to come but probably not. Some families talk a lot about their feelings. My siblings and I mostly don't. We try. Sometimes we succeed but it isn't typical. My Mom and Dad didn't teach us to communicate because they didn't know how. You can't teach what you don't know.
Ah, well, it certainly isn't their fault that their six kids are silent sharers. It's simply how we are.
I could go on but it's enough revelation for one night. I am sipping a bit of Scotch Whiskey in honor of my Dad. In moments like this, I think I miss him.
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