the last toast

It's odd- I spent far too much time dreading a simple dinner that turned out to be anticlimactic, and a ceremony that I saw as a duty turned out to be more moving than I could have thought.

Our dinner at RXM's relatives turned out to not be as stressful as I thought it would be- surprise surprise. And then on Saturday, we returned for my father's service and wake. We shared memories of him, and the organist played Irish ballads. It wasn't a professional service, but it was intensely emotional and personal. And after the service, the storefront that we had battled our way through all the way from LA had cleared way. Annoying things like that could make a person religious.

And then we gave my father a proper Irish wake- joyful, noisy, with lots of alcohol- wine and port, dads favorite drinks. We laughed a lot, ate a lot talked about Dad, how he was such a charmer, how he never settled into one job, how handsome he was. There was a picture of Mom and Dad at their wedding, with dad looking like Cary Grant.. My sister and I talked about dad's favorite ribald songs- she promised to teach me "Bastard King of England", and I'll teach her "Columbus".

It was the sort of family celebration Dad would have enjoyed greatly, the sort that happened all too rarely in life. I think it was a good sendoff.

And for my toast? “May he be in Heaven a half an hour before the devil knows he’s dead”.

Next Stop: the Definition Zone

So I was at dictionary.com, looking up "arch"- in the Jane Austen, not the structural sense- and it spat out this definition:

Mischievous; roguish: an arch glance

Mischevious.

I hate it when I connect to web sites in a parallel universe.

Sunday Morning of the Nearly Dead

On Sunday, RXM and I met my mom at the Unitarian Society to talk to the facilities manager about the reception hall. One interesting thing about the Unitarian Society is that it's filled with sweet white-haired old ladies who make my 79 year-old mother look young and spry.

WHOL's have the ability to ramble on incessantly, and it wasn't long before my mother, a veteran of the Pasadena social scene, made the polite noises that are the socialite equivalent of a fox gnawing its leg off to get out of a trap. Mentioning that her husband had recently died was no help, since for a WHOL, a husband's death is not a matter of sympathy or embarrassed sorrow, but rather a springboard for mordant conversation about her own dead relatives and the manner of their passing. They have passed beyond fragile human emotions, and what is left is an unending desire for chatter. They will glom onto their victems, and they will NOT let go.

RXM of course had the sense to beat a hasty retreat recoiling in horror- it reminded me of the line from Father Ted (Night of the Nearly Dead): "Go 'way. I don't wanna catch the menopause."