Through It All

We buried my mother last Thursday. Frankly, it was surreal somewhat.

We transported her from the city to her hometown early Wednesday morning. Before that, we worked on the papers. There was a minor glitch but thanks to my cousin Noemi, things worked out according to schedule.

We had a one night viewing for relatives in the area. My mother's only sister was still living there and it was really primarily for her that we had the viewing. My father is buried there which is why we decided to do the same for Mama.

On the morning of Thursday, we started out quite early. We had a quick breakfast then got dressed. My sister, brother and the rest of the family decided we wanted to dress in white not black. We did the same for Papa nearly 30 years ago.

A mass was scheduled for 10 a.m. but the funeral parlor staff was already at the house by 8 a.m. So we started the ball rolling. Being quite experienced, they had the lights, the flowers and the coffin loaded in less than 10 minutes. We began to walk the three or so kilometers to the church

My sister had talked to the funeral home staff earlier about the music. She specifically said that she did not want to hear traditional funeral music like Ave Maria and Oh My Mama to be blaring out of the chaise. Well, it turned out that their choice of music was agreeable to us. We actually enjoyed our walk while we sang along with the music coming from the car in front of us.

Onlookers must have been wondering about us. We were obviously the family of the deceased because we were the ones walking directly behind the funeral car. Apparently, we were enjoying the funeral march. We were laughing and singing as we walked. We were also sight seeing and pointing out spots to my brother in-law, sister in-law and nephew who were with us.

Death does not have to be sad, specially if the dead has lived a long full life. I learned that from Akiro Kurosawa's movie Dreams. My mother was two weeks shy of her 83rd birthday when she breath her last. That, I suppose was long enough.