a wake

Today I was at Sunny's younger brother's wake. He would've been 17 in September. Sunny had tears down her cheeks as she stood with her mother and smiled, receiving guests. The line was long and the rooms were packed from the time we arrived at 2 (when the wake was scheduled to begin) until we left after 4:30. The place that held the wake does a lot of "high-tech" memory stuff, including a website dedicated to the deceased individual with his or her "life story," information on the services, a guest book, video/slide show thing, and places to post memories and photos. There were computers set up at the wake for people to add things and see what others had added. I would totally post the link to Sunny's brother's page, but that whole anonymity thing has me in a safe-side compromise: this is the funeral home chain's site so you can see what I'm talking about without knowing the specific person or location. There were tons of photos and his old shirts and trophies and a really cute letter he'd written his mom when he was little (I couldn't actually read it as I started crying as soon as I realized what it was). There was food: cheese and crackers, fresh cherries, scotcheroos (apparently a favorite of the brother), brownies, and M&Ms cookies. I joked with Birdie (the code name I am giving one of my other college friends...the other female with whom I spent most of my time) that you could tell it wasn't a Jewish function because there wasn't a ton of food. Actually, I thought the food was perfect; some salty, some sweet, some fresh (as in the fruit), and all snacky and easy to eat while milling about. Every time I started to get teary (like when I first saw the body and when I first saw Sunny and when I watched Sunny's father's face melt with grief as he hugged one of his best friends*) I would bee-line it to the food. Gave me a chance to pull myself together a bit and think about something very mundane and present. There was also a "grief dog" who mostly wandered around the party staring at people's food, but I liked the idea.

There's so much more to say but I'm crashing. Quick things I do want to make sure I add: 1) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, E! 2) My wonderful $64 a night hotel has free Wi-Fi in the rooms, which is making my very happy and is how I am posting this right now. 3) I've decided to stay tomorrow night as well because Birdie's flight doesn't leave until Tuesday and most of the people she actually knows who aren't related to Sunny will be gone by tomorrow night. Also it de-complicates the issue of where and for how long Freud would need to be somewhere after check-out time during the funeral. 4) All of my reality friends need to fucking have** codenames already. I keep wanting to start into all these little side stories and notes about people, but then I realize I don't know what to call them for blog purposes and right now I don't have the energy to come up with anything so I'm just avoiding the stories about them instead of giving them names or trying to explain who they are. "The person who this coming weekend is marrying the freshman roommate of mygoodfriendwhovisitedbrieflyafewweeksagobutdoesnthaveacodenameyet." Case in point. So I say, if you are a person from my reality-life, COME UP WITH A CODENAME FOR YOURSELF, PLEASE!*** 5) When as I was leaving my improv class yesterday, BB stopped me to ask what I was doing this Wednesday. "I'm going to Kalamazoo for an indefinite period of time." Sounds like the most made-up excuse ever, but it was true. I thought that was funny.

Other things can wait or remain unwritten.


*I don't actually know if the guy was his friend or what, but that's just what it looked like and I'm too tired to craft that extra bit of information into the sentence.
**Does the word "fucking" pack more punch when it is splitting an infinitive?
***I put that text big because I want it to be read by even my friends who are the skimmiest of blogskimmers (not that I blame them at all for being skimmy).