Death be Not Proud
So yesterday was our former son-in-law Donald's funeral and burial service. It was heartbreaking seeing his family deal with their horrible loss. The grandgirls did an amazing job, sharing about him after his brother's pastor tried his best to comfort with some appropriate Bible verses. After their small speeches, I think the saddest thing I saw were his friends from childhood, along with one of our other sons-in-law, carrying his coffin to the waiting hearse to be taken to his gravesite. His family are regular folks - like us, not a lot of money or social status. But to them, he might as well have been the President. His marriage to our daughter didn't work out for a lot of very good reasons. But he was still our granddaughters' father no matter what.
When you get older, you're going to experience this business of death more and more. I have no choice but to accept this and understand that we only have so much time to live the life we were hopefully meant to live on this earth. The tough thing is when someone goes before they normally should, you're left to wonder if there was something you could have done. So many of his friends tried without success to help him. They loved him and they wanted him to survive. Our kids, including our daughter who was his ex-wife, all wanted him to live and thrive and be there for his kids. His story is not mine to tell. I can only tell of the pain his loss has meant to so many.
I pray his journey is a good one and that the things that plagued him in life will fall away. I pray his soul soars on the wing of angels and that he gets to play guitar in the green hills of Heaven, making wild and loud music for all to enjoy.
He might even bump into my brother-in-law, who left this mortal coil six weeks or so earlier. Now THAT would be a conversation I'd like to hear:).
Life has gone on. Our granddaughters are with their mom and stepdad at a nice house somewhere on the Jersey Shore, thanks to his wonderful parents - enjoying swimming and fresh air, and getting away from the sorrow if only for a minute. After the funeral, those of us who didn't go on to the burial had brunch and lifted our glasses to Donald.
Sunday, about seven of us are going to go see Danny at Theater J in DC . It's a serious play and has caused some kerfluffle amongst the audiences. Isn't that what a good play should do? Reflect our condition back at us and cause us to take a second look at our own points of view?
In other news, I've decided to go back to choir and bells at St. J's beginning in the fall. I am so excited to do this. I've missed everyone so much. We've had a number of lovely choirmasters since Nancy left, and it seems the newest fellow is as well. The past couple of years, since they opened things up a bit more, I've been either fighting cancer or dealing with having been exposed to COVID. Hilariously enough, none but one of the times I was exposed was work-related. But, however it happened, there were just too many vulnerable people in our faith community and I was not going to be the reason someone contracted this virus. Another fun fact - I never got it. Who knew? (Knocking on wood....)
On the knitting, spinning, weaving, and cross stitch fronts -
Not much is new since my last post. I have begun another test knit for Pauliina Kuunsola and it is going swimmingly:) This pic shouldn't give it away, but it is an enjoyable knit as all her patterns are.
I'm doing it in two colors - one is some pretty laceweight yard I got at a yarn swap held double. The other is some other fingering weight I also got at a yarn swap. The texture is really lovely and the lace pattern very simple and pretty. Its shape is unusual for me - like an arrowhead - am looking forward to learning how to style it once it's finished.
Spinning - I got my hand carders and will be putting them together properly and getting some rolags made up and spinning this coming Saturday.
Weaving and Cross Stitch - still working on the one project I started prior to the onset of the pandemic. It's in fingering weight wool so of course more rows per inch and more time per mileage. I have yet to warp the 32" wide loom, but that will be my next project when this one is complete. Hmm for some reason, I am very monogamous with the weaving and the cross stitch. The Thanksgiving cross stitch project is sitting idle - hope to get back to it before the weekend some evening.
Sunday night we celebrated Father's Day. The "kids" got J a portrait of the six of them together and a coffee mug with individual pictures of them, saying "World's Best Dad." It meant the world to him - the picture is now hanging over the fireplace:). The grandkids got him some lovely gifts and cards as well. Of course, we wished the sons-in-law a happy father and stepfather's day. And earlier that morning my four brothers, one of my sisters, and I wished them and my sister's husband a Happy Father's Day. I got the cutest picture of my brother D's granddaughter that I will decidedly not be posting here for her safety.
For some reason, J saw fit to order a book for me by Hannah Pick-Goslar (to add to my pile at the top of this post:)). We've been watching National Geographic's homage to the late Miep Gies, the woman who hid the Frank and the Van Pels families and her dentist, Dr. Pfeffer, in the attic and annex to the building housing the company where Mr. Frank and later Ms. Gies worked. The series takes a lot of liberty with the more personal aspects of her life, but when it comes to the basic facts about the ones in hiding, it is a very faithful recounting of a remarkable story.
I googled Miep Gies and saw that she had died the year she would have turned 101. Something in me said, "You go, girl!" It still moves me deeply when I think about it. Truly the best revenge is a good life. Her husband lived to his late 80s. Thinking of her reminds me (sort of) of Hannah Arendt - the psychologist who made a study of how the German citizens of Nazi Germany were able to either commit these acts of evil or stand by as they happened. This grew out of her observation of the Nuremburg trials in 1945. Her theory was that evil is essentially mundane - that the people who committed some of the worst atrocities did so as normal everyday citizens. I think Ms. Gies embodies the opposite of this evil; the most stunning acts of heroic bravery and love occur in split-second decisions in everyday life - sometimes without us even noticing. In those briefest and mundane of moments we learn who we really are.
Anyone -- especially any baby boomer -- who grew up on Long Island in the 50's 60's and 70's grew up reading Anne Frank's diary. She was as much a part of our lives as if she had been a distant cousin from whatever old country our families came from. She was never a dead person - her book kept her eternally alive. Today, my more logical side knows that were she indeed alive, Anne Frank would be in her 90s. But she will always be a young girl on the threshold of life to me.
Anne Frank's mystique followed us throughout our growing up years. In fact, in my senior year in high school, our school librarian told us an amazing story about her daughter meeting up with Otto Frank in the early 70s -- and at the Anne Frank Museum no less! I confess every time I remember what she told us about her daughter's encounter with him, I get goosebumps. Apparently, they corresponded for a while prior to his death in August of 1980.
So -- the book by Ms. Pick-Goslar (who recently died in her early 90s) is a memoir of her life with her friend, Anne Frank. I have made it through her introduction with its description of her life with her family in Israel - and am screwing up the courage to read the first chapter and get into the real story. Wish me luck.
So this post was fairly "heavy-duty." Hey, it happens. Hoping dear 1.5 readers, that life is treating you well. God be with you 'til we meet again+
Comments