Trip Like I Do

Funeral

February 18, 2007

My Grandma’s funeral was today, well, since it’s past midnight, I guess I could say yesterday.

At least that part is over and the real fun begins, but I guess I will get to that.

Friday was a little hectic.  We needed to take the programs to the printers and were hoping to do a little more editing, but my computer started freaking out Thursday and really got hosed on Friday.  Firefox started to constantly crash Thursday night.  It was late, so I figured I would just deal with it in the morning.  Okay, the next day my cousin turned it on and then came to me stating that it wasn’t working.  Hmmm.  I reboot and then I got a message that my copy of windows was not genuine and that I may be a victim of software piracy.

WTF?  I know it’s genuine and fuck, it passed all those previous authentication requests I did before, so I had and still have no idea wtf is going on.  My computer has been pretty slow lately.  I think that I might have corrupted the registry because of all of these hard boots I had to do when I installed the beta for the Lord of the Rings Online and the Yahoo Music Jukebox.  My computer kept freezing during those installations, so I would do a hard shut down to get the thing going again.  I knew that a format and reinstall was coming, but I didn’t want to deal with that until after the funeral was over.

So I started getting this message that my install of windows wasn’t genuine and my computer would boot, but then all of these other programs would start crashing.  I just figured that my clean install was going to be happening a lot sooner than I thought it would, so then I tried transferring my pictures to my external hard drive for backup, I would get a BSOD and the freaking thing would reboot.  Tried the transfer and again a couple of minutes later, BSOD and reboot.  Grrrrrr.  I finally figured that if I transfer the individual folders it would take a little longer to reboot than if I did the whole My Pictures folder at once, but Grrr.  What a freaking pain in the ass.

I did at least print a few copies of the program pages the night before so my Aunt had something she could take to the copy place on Friday.

That night we had a family dinner at the house.  At first I thought my Mom ordered too much food and then I thought she didn’t order enough, but it came out to be just the right amount.  Whew.  My Aunt wanted to get Chinese food so we had a whole variety of stuff to choose from.  It was a long night, but it was nice hanging out with the family.

Saturday was the funeral and it started off okay.  The funeral was at noon and we were told to show up about an hour before the service, but we thought we would get there around 10:30am and it was a good thing we did because some people started coming around then.  Of course, the people who showed up early were the ones that had to go somewhere and couldn’t stay for the service, but still…  Anyways, I was okay for the most part, but I started to get a major anxiety attack about an hour before the service.  I mean major.  I get gastro intestinal distress when I get an anxiety attack.  It was not pretty.  I wasn’t sure if something like that was going to happen, so I did have some immodium with me and I am glad that I did.

I don’t know what it is.  I just get nervous and it happens.  I know that it usually happens if I am in a crowded area and maybe that is what set it off.  All of the people and talking just got to me.  I should have gone in the front to meet people paying their condolences, but I just couldn’t until about 10 minutes before the service and I think I took like 4 trips to the bathroom before then.  Ach.

I was worried that I was going to have to get up and leave during the ceremony, but I calmed down and was okay for the service.  Well, I was okay until we got to the offering of the incense and I just lost it.
We had a Buddhist ceremony for Grandma.  I haven’t been to a lot of funerals in my life, and I think I might have gone to one or two Christian funerals, but the majority have been Buddhist.  I like Buddhist ones better.  There is a lot of chanting  and the Reverend bangs a bowl – like one of those Tibetan meditation bowls during parts of the ceremony.  It’s just very calming and meditative.

We had the 7 day service right after the main ceremony.  Of course the 7 day service was like a week late, but I think it’s okay – especially since Grandma’s ashes didn’t arrive until a couple of days ago.

We catered some food for after the ceremony and I think we would have had enough, but my Mom called the mortuary a couple of days ago and ordered even more food, so we ended up having to bring back like 6 full trays of stuff.  I don’t know how we are going to eat it all.  Then again, there are quite a few of use here right now, so maybe it will go in a couple of days.

We were all pretty tired when we did get back to the house, but there is still a lot of stuff to be done.  My uncle started working on our mailbox.  The door broke and we have been meaning to replace it, but my Mom and I were kind of clueless on how.  My uncle is pretty handy and put the new one up in no time.

My aunt and I cleaned up a little and since the little kids weren’t around we decided to divide up the jewelry then.  My Grandma had quite a few pieces of jewelry but the only thing I really wanted was this blue pearl ring she had since it matched this blue pearl choker Mom gave me a little while back.  Grandma also already gave me her favorite ring a couple of years ago, so I was satisfied with that.  I picked out a few things for my sister, but I don’t know if she would want them, so I am going to send her some pictures to see if she wants them – after I get my computer fixed.

We are going to deliver flowers to various graveyards in the morning and so I really need to get to bed.

I did take some pictures of the flowers and the altar at the funeral and I’ll try to upload those when I get the chance too.

Filed under: Whatever