"I can't wait for the wake."

"Kauniit muistot eivät koskaan kuole eivätkä milloinkaan jätä yksin."

- - -

So. That's what funerals are like. The service at the chapel began at noon; most of the us (there were twenty-five of us in all) had arrived about fifteen minutes earlier and we had to sit there in the chapel in silence only broken by occasional sobbing from my grandparents and my aunt, as well as my mother and her mother. It seemed like an hour, though, sitting there in the front row with only the coffin to stare at and waiting for the priest to show up. The coffin was simple, white (they had argued about the coffin a week before the funeral); I couldn't imagine my father in there even though I tried. Instead, a picture of him smiling kept coming back before my eyes. The sermon was pretty much as someone on Monday evening said: relatively short, and the one speech (which, albeit not untrue, was one-sided and superficial, as was the other speech he made in the memorial service) was made by the priest. I understand the usual number of hymns in a funeral is two; in my father's funeral, however, the number had increased to three, quite possibly due to my grandmother. I got the impression that she had planned this funeral a long time ago; how else could she have all the hymns and the food (she wanted to have a food service in the memorial after the burial, my mother didn't but eventually gave in) looked up so quickly? I know it took me a small eternity to even come up with a written list of all the songs I like and then try to narrow to list a humanly understandable proportion, which then could be played in my funeral. It's still not finished; I update it all the time as I encounter more and more good songs. I don't know, maybe I'm just indecisive and she's not.

Anyway, the sermon continued after the hymns with all of the guests taking their bouquets to the coffin. The text cited in the beginning is what was written on the card with our bouquet. Since I was the only one not to cry or even weep (you can probably guess how many glances it made others to silently throw at me during the course of the day) I read it out loud by the coffin as my mother cried, my sister wept and my brother looked like bursting in tears any second. In the end the sermon finished with 'Adagio', and the pallbearers (I wasn't one of them; I seriously believe my grandmother's strictness of the sex roles was the reason since my little brother, still a minor, was allowed to be one of the carriers; I was furious) took the coffin to the hearse which then lead us all to the cemetery farther away from the church.

The burial itself was more like what I had imagined the funeral would be like. We walked to the right place (I didn't know the exact place in the cemetery beforehand). Each of us children was given a white rose by our mother to drop above the coffin after the lowering and before covering the grave. I walked to stand by the grave with my siblings. They stood there for a moment and threw the roses in; I kneeled down, dropped the rose accompanied by a Shakespeare quote: "Fare thee well". For some reason a Sonata Arctica song kept going on in my head during the burial. I no longer remember which one it was, 'It won't fade' or 'The Vice'. Somehow I knew he would be buried there, in that particular cemetery. I've always thought it’s so much more beautiful than the one surrounding the church. This one is older, and you can see it from the different tombstones. Actually, it's nicer to be buried in a cemetery that is surrounded by a forest and has different trees growing amongst the graves, and has a great variety of iron crosses and tombstones (there is actually one with a pentagram that I've found particularly interesting). For a while I thought I would be buried there as well, but now… no, I'll be buried here, this is my real home.

Okay, to prevent this blogging from becoming a report of descriptions in great lengths, I have to share a funny anecdote (at least it's funny in my opinion, so therefore the semantics of 'funny' is disputable…). Once my father's final resting place was settled and paid for, the authority in question told that my mother had a place automatically reserved for her next to him as she was his wife. The day following this "reservation" my mother found out something incredibly hilarious: my grandparents, the ones to blame my mother for my father's suicide, had reserved each a place for their own graves next to my parents' (to-be-)graves. I wish I could have been present to see the look on my mother's face when she found out she's not going to get rid of those two even in death. Well, at least the place is only reserved for her, she’s not obliged to be buried there. Actually, I started thinking the possibility of a stepfather. I would much rather not think about it, but since I'm myself a walking and talking proof that my mother is a sexual being I also have to face the fact that having a stepfather is quite plausible. After all, my mother isn't that old, she's only forty-four. That would also mean it's feasible I may have stepsiblings in the future. Eh… I'm really not that enthusiastic about having to get to know to new people without really wanting to get to know to new people; but I couldn't exactly avoid it, so I guess I'll just have to grin and bear it if it comes to that.

Then the wake… let us state the OALD's definition for the event: "1. An occasion before or after a funeral when people gather to remember the dead person, traditionally held the night before the funeral to watch over the before it is buried." Save the watching over (the doctors wouldn't allow my grandmother to look at her son's body; I gather it was in a pretty bad shape since he had been in the car dead for a day [or at least the pathologist's preliminary report said it's l i k e l y he had died on Sunday] before he was found) the definition is nowhere near the memorial service we had. I thought of it, too, as we ate the lunch my grandmother wanted to offer to the guests. I mean, the name itself says it: it was supposed to be a "memorial" service, and yet it had nothing of the like in it. We should have had my father's favourite food, not the one my grandmother and my mother like. We should have listened to my father's favourite music, not sing the hymns my grandmother selected, ones I very much doubt my father ever even heard of. The only thing to tell it was a memorial service, instead of some random religious occasion, was my father's picture between two white candles on a table in one corner of the room in which the service was held. My grandmother had selected the picture; I cannot understand why she chose one that depicted my father in such a depressive and intimidating way (in the picture he's sitting on a chair on the left side of and in front of the picture, staring at the camera with a look on his face, a look that says that he's now very angry and couldn't care less of being taken pictures of right now). I know there actually were plenty of pictures of him smiling. I think that would have been far better.

So, in short, the funeral was a rather formal one with much more Christian contents than I would like to have. Now the next subject of debate between my grandparents and my mother will be the tombstone: they had already argued about it the Sunday preceding the funeral. I do think it’s my mother's opinion that weights more: she is determined to have an original stone that is taken from a forest and has a metal plate with my father's information fastened on the stone's surface, instead of one of those impersonal boxes you see everywhere, one that my grandparents would prefer. Next, within the next three months, will be the estate evaluation, and after that my father's possessions will be divided as the law degrees. It'll take place during a week day, so I can't be physically present since I'll be at work. I could take off one day but travelling back and forth would take one more day at best, and I already had to do that for the funeral (why, why it had to be held on T h u r s d a y ?).

Näistä kuvista, näistä tunnelmista, sayonara. Now I'll have a movie night since I have a night shift tomorrow. First I'll watch 'Bruce, Almighty' and after that I have to watch 'Populäärimusiikkia Vittulajänkältä' again (it was so good!!!).

Noswaith dda!

- - -

The Meme of the Day:

http://www.world66.com/myworld66

Build a map of all countries you have visited. The bad side is that the map also shows, for instance, Alaska as one of the visited places even if you had never set a foot on its soil, only because it is a part of the US. I created a map of all the European countries I have visited; no need to expand it any further just yet. Have fun!