FIL's funeral was yesterday. Today it seemed a million miles away one moment and 30 seconds away the next. Every year for quite a while now, a friend (who has family nearby) used to bring FIL up for the day on Good Friday so, he would have been here today. M spent some time this morning putting together a big old swinging garden seat that we were given at the end of last summer. We put it at the bottom of the garden, looking towards the house, and ate our lunch out there. There was blue sky, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, there are spring flowers out in the garden...just the sort of day that FIL would've loved. In previous years, I've sometimes felt a little put out at having to entertain FIL so close to the opening of my show with so many other things to be done but today I'd have given anything to have him sit with us on the new swinging seat.
Grief is a strange thing, the whole funeral thing is a strange thing, sobbing one moment, laughing the next, disbelief that someone has gone one minute, sharing happy memories of them the next. I couldn't tell you much about yesterday but I remember really odd little things...the undertaker had bad teeth, there was a Winnie the Pooh helium balloon way up in the corner of the church ceiling, how the swell of the organ for the last verse of Praise My Soul the King of Heaven made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, the British Legion flags sinking as the Exhortation was read, at the crem there were two chairs against the wall in front of where we sat and one of them had two big muddy footprints on, one of M's cousins wore blue mascara, the heat in the car on the return journey from the crem was stifling as we sat in roadworks, all things that are of little importance but made an impression on me over everything else.
Two and a half weeks ago we were gearing up for Miss E's 14th birthday, that weekend we were going to stay with FIL, M was going to rotivate his allotment for him, we would have had birthday cake and laughter. But that didn't happen, of course. Both mine and M's families aren't good at showing emotion and there's lots of things we never said to FIL that we never can say now. Hug your loved ones tonight, tell them what they mean to you.
