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.

Small vrs Big

I am alone again where my mom's remains i right now.  My sister has to go and work on some papers for the interment, and also get some supplies. My brother is still on his way home from abroad.

If we were a bigger family, there would be more people working on stuff. We would not be so tired at the end of the day. No guests would be ignored which was what happened earlier. I had two sets of guests but I can't talk to all of them at the same time because they have different interests

On the other hand, some things are simpler with fewer siblings Decisions can be made faster as there are fewer opinions to consider We easily agreed on final arrangements.

In bigger families too, they wait for everybody before things can be finalized. Is everybody coming home for the burial? Who will be in charge of what? How will everybody be transported,

In our case, division of labor is simple, /Arrangements were decided on quickly, Aside from being small in size, I guess our heads were in the right paces, We did not let emotion get the better of us,

Not yet anyway.