The wakes and funerals.

Some random artsy image before the long entry

There was some mild drama that I believe my mother and sister thought up and my cousin was the worst stick in the mud, but overall it was a good experience. I really hate wearing a suit though, and the collar of it gave me a skin irritation on my neck. My neck is still sore and makes it look like I have a rash.

Earlier this week, my sister and two of my cousins (Let's call the older one who wanted to run thing O and her younger sister Y) worked on selecting pictures to put up for the wakes & funeral. It was completely unorganized, because O, who was closest to great grandma was acting like she wanted to take over for these arrangements but never really asked for help (then complained no one was helping her). My sister and I offered to help, expected something to be set up but essentially we had to really push her to get started (Don't get me wrong, I love my cousin, she's one of my good friends, but she was also close with great grandma, so I believe she was just really thrown off in general. Not that it completely excuses her though). My sister was getting frustrated having so much indecision (Y just goes with the flow for the most part), so she took over a lot of it on the first night. The second night, I had to step up and organize the pictures. O and Y would find pictures they liked of G-grandma while I'd set them up in different categories as best I could. The goal was to set up the poster boards into different categories and post the pictures on them so people at the wake could easily look at them. We managed to get things done really late at night with some small annoyances in between (O not telling us she needed fun tack until really late for instance). Both those nights I ended up eating fast food, which I rarely do.

The wakes, only O was zombie. Even my grandmother was in better spirits with all the different people that showed their respect. I had thought things were going to be quite boring with no one to talk to, but I felt more able to talk to strangers, plus my best friend came in for the first wake period and kept me company. Second wake period, had a few awkward conversations with strange relatives but then just chatted it up it O's boyfriend (who, too, felt useless to help O and her zombie-like state) and her sister about random things. It made the time go by really fast.

Which brings us to today, the funeral. I was a pallbearer, so had to come in extra early to the funeral home before we transport the body the the church for services. O & Y's pastor showed at the funeral home (the one I talked about some time back that creeped me out with how close she was acting to my cousins) and she kissed them both on the forehead, further freaking me out. I tried to comfort O but she was still a zombie and unreceptive. Speed things up to the funeral procession, drivers don't seem to understand that a bunch of cars lines up with their bright & hazard lights on is a funeral profession. People kept trying to butt in and beeping their horns. Dad (who drove me) cut people who butted in which was scary yet exciting at the same time haha). One person who had cut in later apologized as she passed by, which did restore some faith in humanity, heh.

The church services were mostly bland, except O singing one song of g-grandma's favorites. Also people coming up to speak was rather touching, even the annoying caretaker that performed CPR when she probably shouldn't have some time back had rather good words. The Reverend guy though was a real bad public speaker. He was pretty much babbling trying to find comforting words and then rambled on his point of view of finding out how G-grandma died (which was utterly pointless). It was obvious he did not practice his words for this, which I felt was rather insulting.

After the annoyance that was the church services, we had one more funeral procession line to the cemetery. This part was absolutely retarded. Apparently, O and her mother thought it would be cute to have the procession pass by g-grandma's old house (which was rather out of the way and a horrible idea for a whole line of cars that would hold up traffic). If I'd have known that was what they were going to do, I'd have insisted to dad to just head to the cemetery and wait for them to do their stupid route.

At the cemetery, we said our final goodbyes to great grandma, and then distributed flowers to the graves nearby (the only cool thing the reverend guy suggested before he babbled on). We found some graves relating to us which I typed in my phone for my family tree, and then passed flowers on them and several other graves nearby. After this was just a luncheon back at the church, nothing very eventful really, and then we returned home and napped our asses off.

I was wrong in the last entry about how my grandmother now is my eldest living relative. My father's late parents still has siblings alive so I still have great aunts and uncles (or would they be called grand-aunts and uncles since they are in the same generation as grandparents?). I never really appreciated my extended family much until great-grandma died... I am grateful for that gift, and will try to be a more social person when it comes to my other family.

I may have a few more entries similar to this for a few more days, but things will pick up to general annoyances and less depressing posts soon enough. Tomorrow I do have another cousin of mine's housewarming party to go to, which might make a fun update to do as well! Take care everyone!