upon the second anniversary of receiving news of one's father's passing
I find I no longer have a strictly appropriate icon for this situation. Hmm.
Two years ago today I got word that my father had died.
Yesterday was the actual death anniversary, but we didn't hear until the following day, because no one else was home. Except the kid brother in Edmonton, we were all in Ontario - Mom was visiting her dad, G and F and I were living in Toronto.
I got a voicemail from my mother in the late afternoon, after school, telling me to call her back. Mom sounded terrible, like she was crying or very sick, and I thought, Grandpa's dead. I couldn't imagine what else would make her sound like that.
Failure of imagination.
It sucked, and it continues, periodically, to suck, but it's a selfish kind of awful. He was in a lot of pain for a lot of years, and he's gone home. I believe that, without a shade of doubt.
I think about his funeral a lot. It was very beautiful. We were fortunate that the Latin-rite priest who used to travel down from Calgary every two weeks to celebrate Tridentine Mass at our parish was willing to celebrate his funeral. It probably helped that Dad was one-half of the core schola and Father Blust knew him decently well.
Part of me wanted to take pictures at the funeral, but most of me wanted to just keep it in my head, just for me. The memories will fade into inaccuracy - have begun to do so already. That's fine. Certain things stand out: the black velvet vestments, heavily embroidered in metallic thread that read somewhere between gold and silver; the coffin with its black mantle, so strange because he was cremated; following the man from the funeral parlour whose name I don't remember but who I trusted immediately and completely because he has been an usher in our parish since I was a child; preparing the small girls' ensemble, made up of a handful of my mother's students, who sang Tota pulchra es Maria from the loft before Mass (they got a little hung up on "tu honorificentia populi nostri" bit because chromaticism, but considering the timeline they were working under and their age and experience, they did a remarkable job, and preparing them gave me something concrete to do that would not have gotten done otherwise)
I remember being fine, just fine, when I got downstairs to the parish hall where the reception was to be, until I saw an old and dear friend of my father's who offered me a hug, and I found myself apologising for crying. He, bless the man, walked straight through my apologies and offered me consolation instead.
It was a good day, to be honest. I remember shopping for flowers with my mother, who had a very specific idea of the sort of memorial display she wanted; it involved purchasing a daffodil in a pot small enough to fit inside the bell of an alto sax, among other things. I remember setting up the display, which involved all his old instruments, and poking through the exciting folio compartment in the lid of his clarinet case to discover it held the clarinet part for Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time.
I remember a lot. It was only two years ago, after all. I wouldn't trust myself to lead a class on grief, as I was once called upon to do as a sub last year (when I found out the lesson plans, I had to contact the office and see if they could switch me out with someone, because there was no way), but most of the time, I can talk about Dad without crying, without even wanting to cry. I get into specifics about the funeral, and yeah, I lose it a little still, but I'm okay. It's been two years and I'm okay.
Well. Aside from the bronchitis. But that's unrelated, I'm pretty sure.
Two years ago today I got word that my father had died.
Yesterday was the actual death anniversary, but we didn't hear until the following day, because no one else was home. Except the kid brother in Edmonton, we were all in Ontario - Mom was visiting her dad, G and F and I were living in Toronto.
I got a voicemail from my mother in the late afternoon, after school, telling me to call her back. Mom sounded terrible, like she was crying or very sick, and I thought, Grandpa's dead. I couldn't imagine what else would make her sound like that.
Failure of imagination.
It sucked, and it continues, periodically, to suck, but it's a selfish kind of awful. He was in a lot of pain for a lot of years, and he's gone home. I believe that, without a shade of doubt.
I think about his funeral a lot. It was very beautiful. We were fortunate that the Latin-rite priest who used to travel down from Calgary every two weeks to celebrate Tridentine Mass at our parish was willing to celebrate his funeral. It probably helped that Dad was one-half of the core schola and Father Blust knew him decently well.
Part of me wanted to take pictures at the funeral, but most of me wanted to just keep it in my head, just for me. The memories will fade into inaccuracy - have begun to do so already. That's fine. Certain things stand out: the black velvet vestments, heavily embroidered in metallic thread that read somewhere between gold and silver; the coffin with its black mantle, so strange because he was cremated; following the man from the funeral parlour whose name I don't remember but who I trusted immediately and completely because he has been an usher in our parish since I was a child; preparing the small girls' ensemble, made up of a handful of my mother's students, who sang Tota pulchra es Maria from the loft before Mass (they got a little hung up on "tu honorificentia populi nostri" bit because chromaticism, but considering the timeline they were working under and their age and experience, they did a remarkable job, and preparing them gave me something concrete to do that would not have gotten done otherwise)
I remember being fine, just fine, when I got downstairs to the parish hall where the reception was to be, until I saw an old and dear friend of my father's who offered me a hug, and I found myself apologising for crying. He, bless the man, walked straight through my apologies and offered me consolation instead.
It was a good day, to be honest. I remember shopping for flowers with my mother, who had a very specific idea of the sort of memorial display she wanted; it involved purchasing a daffodil in a pot small enough to fit inside the bell of an alto sax, among other things. I remember setting up the display, which involved all his old instruments, and poking through the exciting folio compartment in the lid of his clarinet case to discover it held the clarinet part for Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time.
I remember a lot. It was only two years ago, after all. I wouldn't trust myself to lead a class on grief, as I was once called upon to do as a sub last year (when I found out the lesson plans, I had to contact the office and see if they could switch me out with someone, because there was no way), but most of the time, I can talk about Dad without crying, without even wanting to cry. I get into specifics about the funeral, and yeah, I lose it a little still, but I'm okay. It's been two years and I'm okay.
Well. Aside from the bronchitis. But that's unrelated, I'm pretty sure.