wake

[threeplusfire]

We spent most of the evening at the funeral home, in a couple big rooms filled with flower arrangements and the coffin. I understand the cultural and sociohistorical significance of sitting with the dead, but god help me I wish we didn't do it. I half expected him to move, to get up or to cough. There's something so jarring about seeing him so lifelike and so dead.

My headache won't go away, no matter what.

There were probably a hundred and twenty five people in there today, family and friends and just people who knew August Nowak. It's astounding how much this man did for his community in his day to day life, and how effortlessly it seemed to come to him.

Alan and I arranged the Little League pictures and baseballs. While we packed stuff up this afternoon, I found a shoe box full of little diaries. There are decades worth of entries in a clear, old fashioned cursive hand that belonged to Mattie, his wife. Some of them are starting to fall apart, and I told Joan I would gladly take the task of transcribing all of them. I wouldn't want her to lose something like that.

You know it's a Texas death, because people haven't stopped bringing food. Alan and I will end up carting an ice chest home with us, no doubt.

Comments

[todfox.livejournal.com]

It's not that I wish we didn't do it, myself. I wish we would just let them be DEAD, rather than pumping the corpses full of chemicals and makeup to make them look alive. If the purpose of seeing the body is to help the loved ones come to acceptance of death, why pretend he's still alive? We're very removed from death here in this culture, even when we're supposedly honoring it.

[calledmara.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to let you know that I'm very sorry about this and am keeping you and Alan in my thoughts.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

thank you, very much Daina. I am deeply grateful.