The Funeral...

The Wake and the Service occurred during the events of the last two days. As abrupt as the date was chosen for the wake and the service, was abrupt as the events in itself. Coordination was poor, and again I question my criticality on people. As the wake started at 2PM yesterday, a couple tears shed in the family and we sat down. Waiting for visitors, they were far between.

A few things (and I'll just keep it to a few), My mom and my aunts have no idea on what to do during a funeral. The bratty granddaughter still a brat during the whole event; is it so hard to not run around the whole funeral home when your grandfather is dead?

Today, during the service I have never seen so much chaos in organizing as I did today. My aunts didn't know exactly what they were doing, so did my mother. Organizing the service to happen around 9-11, and having a luncheon around 4:30? Traditionally, from what I learned today, is you give a red envelope to those who attended to the service during the meal following...however the meal was a good 4 hours between the service, and by that time they would have eaten or gotten on with the rest of the day. On the way back from the service, there was also a lack of directions given to the people attending. Apparently, people were suppose to stop by the home, but a lot of people did not know where to go.

Evidence being, one person would say something, and another would say something else. Confusion pursues...I know such an event usually consists of a lot of silence, but in the end there was nothing, but noise. I would describe my mother and aunts as being a bunch of headless chickens, because they were wandering aimlessly. I was not the only one that was frustrated with the arrangements, all the in-laws were too.

Over the course of the last two days, I have been reviewing actions of certain members of the family (mainly my generation), and they seem to not have put much thought into the magnitude of such a day. Maybe, I have been to hard on myself, and on others I really don't know.

This closes another chapter in my life, I hope that I can find a better footing in my own life now.

-David M.