My brother, sister and I are busy preparing everything for my mother’s cremation. It’s going well, the hardest part is finding people who have the stones to say something at her funeral. Naturally, I will do it (“As long as I have to.”) and my cousin Kim wanted to recite something she found very relevant. With my father’s funeral, his best friend spoke as well, and he’s a writer, poet and Dutch teacher, so he knows how to do that really well. I wish there was someone like that now, too.
The hardest part, personally, is talking to everyone we are inviting. We took the same approach as last year, by bringing the invitations/mourning cards personally. It means you have the same conversation a lot, and because I was with her in Italy they kind of look to me for the details, but I find myself a little reluctant to share them. Not because I’m greedy, but because the last few hours were kind of hard. Well, really hard and not something I think she’d tell to others. See, my mother had a tendency to hide her pain and suffering.
I don’t know. I have a tendency to fall silent a lot lately.
I think I understand, because I have been having the same thing.
I think it’s because it’s something private, and close to your core, to your heart and your experience, and you can’t really put it into words. It’s almost abstract.
…plus, the parts that are hard are exhausting to think about, let alone talk about. Sometimes it makes you reluctant to make that effort for every person that comes along.
it’s because people want you to comfort them and you simply can not give them what they want from you. so you say nothing.