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Sep. 20th, 2006 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseMy great-grandmother passed away last Thursday. She died in her sleep, so peacefully that she didn't even wake my grandma sleeping in a chair next to her holding her hand.
I love my big morbid family. I guess other people don't wait around after the minister leaves the cemetary and the tractors come in with the dirt, but we do. We all stood around her until she was well-sped. I can't imagine leaving before that--it would feel like taking a small child to bed and just pitching them in a room and walking away. We needed to sit there by her until she was well and truly asleep, safe and sound. I would have preferred to have been able to do the burying myself, and to have dispensed with the big sealed coffin. So would she--we're pine box folks--but the cemetary has rules, and she needed to be buried there with her mother and father and husband and sister.
When we cleared out her apartment, I found a beautiful little antique pocket edition of The Merchant of Venice inscribed to my great-grandfather, who died the year before I was born, when he was in junior high. That came back with me.
One of my cousins, bless him, thought to record her playing the organ last spring when she started failing. She played for my gran less than two weeks before she died. I've got the recording, and a bunch of her sheet music. She set us the hardest hymns she could find for her funeral service, challenging us.
I'm okay. Tired, and a bit brittle, but it was the best thing that could have been. I want to be an old lady in the way that she was. Love you, grandma.
I love my big morbid family. I guess other people don't wait around after the minister leaves the cemetary and the tractors come in with the dirt, but we do. We all stood around her until she was well-sped. I can't imagine leaving before that--it would feel like taking a small child to bed and just pitching them in a room and walking away. We needed to sit there by her until she was well and truly asleep, safe and sound. I would have preferred to have been able to do the burying myself, and to have dispensed with the big sealed coffin. So would she--we're pine box folks--but the cemetary has rules, and she needed to be buried there with her mother and father and husband and sister.
When we cleared out her apartment, I found a beautiful little antique pocket edition of The Merchant of Venice inscribed to my great-grandfather, who died the year before I was born, when he was in junior high. That came back with me.
One of my cousins, bless him, thought to record her playing the organ last spring when she started failing. She played for my gran less than two weeks before she died. I've got the recording, and a bunch of her sheet music. She set us the hardest hymns she could find for her funeral service, challenging us.
I'm okay. Tired, and a bit brittle, but it was the best thing that could have been. I want to be an old lady in the way that she was. Love you, grandma.
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Date: 2006-09-21 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:59 pm (UTC)It's more than that she apparently reached a ripe old age, and reproduced to boot. It's more than that she had a grave waiting for her with her family, and that she had a house and an organ and stability. It's the peace in this picture, the mutual love, that makes me feel very sad when I think of my own life.
And even this post. You miss her, but you're not torn open in pain, you're not angry, you're just loving and respectful towards her. How beautifully gentle.
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Date: 2006-09-21 11:13 pm (UTC)