Saying goodbye, again

[kate_schaefer]

Yesterday I went to the funeral for my friend Bruce Durocher. Bruce E. Durocher, II, master of digression and unusual facts. I had expected to be sad but okay, the way one generally is at a funeral of a someone who had been ill for a very long time; instead, I wept uncontrollably all the way through. Some of that weeping was for Bruce; some was for

Comments

[athenais]

I'm so sorry, Kate. I know how the losses pile up. I do love the story of your aunts.

I must have met Bruce, but I can't call him to mind. I really wasn't part of Seattle fandom for very long, though, just a year and a half. He sounds like a thoroughly swell guy.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks, Lucy. You might not have met Bruce. He showed up in our circles some years after Margaret, and I'm pretty sure Margaret didn't start coming to Vanguard until after you headed off to Tennessee.

Bruce was sweet, kind, and soft-spoken; not precisely self-effacing, but you wouldn't notice him in a crowd of ebullient people.

[randy_byers]

Thanks, Kate. This is great stuff. I somehow didn't know Bruce at all either, although I did see him around the various fannish gatherings.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks, Randy. I didn't really know Bruce well, but he was someone I liked and didn't know well for about twenty years, and he was the partner of someone I am closer to. You can get pretty fond of someone you don't know well for that long, and you can accumulate a bunch of memories across that time.

One of the things that really set me off crying that I didn't even mention was the sight of Margaret standing or sitting alone in the pew, alone when she had been so well partnered.

[randy_byers]

alone when she had been so well partnered

Yes, that's been hitting me when I've visited Andi Shechter recently. In fact, there was a thread on Andi's Facebook involving people who had recently lost partners that included Margaret and also John Sapienza.

[scarlettina]

I was fine through the service until the burying of the ashes. Karen and I were both a little scandalized by the use of a trowel to place soil over them; in the Jewish tradition, it's done by hand, and both she and I did it that way--and that's the point in the day when I lost it. I've done that ritual more times than I care to count. Astrid observed that one of the reasons it hit me so hard is because each time you do it, you're burying everyone you've ever buried, not only the person at one particular time. I hate that Bruce has joined that company. He will be missed.

[kate_schaefer]

Yes, that: burying everyone you've ever buried.

[amysisson]

I'm sorry about your friend.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks, Amy. I know you've been through a lot of loss, too.

[wild_irises]

If I said I'm glad you got to do that crying, would you understand? Losses pile up, we live on past them, and sometimes we have to feel all the feelings ...

I didn't know Bruce either, and you evoke him beautifully.

[kate_schaefer]

Thanks, Deb. Yes.