love one another

happy birthday, jen, my favorite sister. i still swear you're the smart one in the family...

maundy thursday, which angela this morning informed us means "mandate thursday." and our mandate? "Love one another." appropriate for the week, for if jeremy's life demonstrated anything (other than a refreshing lack of tact), it was this need in our lives to love and be loved. i pray this week will encourage us reeling from his death to take on that quality of jeremy's life - to not let friendship languish but to keep in touch. it's a lesson too easily forgotten.

i feel a need to scatter words to remember jeremy, but find my pockets mostly empty. in the meantime, read this and this, which capture much of who he was.

break is nearly done, what break there was. though honestly i cannot complain - i saw more friends than i would have and spared myself days wasted alone in my house. and had this not happened over break, i would not have had the freedom to go to the viewing and the funeral. friends are insignificant and irrelevant to the school - you are only free to mourn those bound to you by blood. at least i was spared this frustration, which i know many others were not.

i've not give much thought to what i would want at my funeral, but i know some things i do not want. though i despise it myself, i suppose there's no getting around my body being present at the viewing - some will need to see me to begin mourning. all i keep thinking is, more wake, less art exhibit. not sure how that's done - maybe it's all in the amount of alcohol....

and while i like flowers and appreciate their beauty and symbolism, i think there are better ways to honor my life than something that will wither within the week.

then there's the funeral itself. repeat after me - no open casket. if the casket needs to be there to give the pallbearers something to do, fine, but don't prop me up on fluffy pillows like i'm simply taking a nap. and since i'd prefer to be cremated anyway, no need for some fancy casket - again, money better spent elsewhere.

and this i cannot emphasize enough: MY FUNERAL IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU TO GUILT PEOPLE INTO SALVATION. i understand the desire to do this. i understand you have a captive audience. but this is not the time, nor the place. let your guiding thought be comfort in this world, not fear of what lies in the next. there is a better than decent chance that if this happens at my funeral, my spirit may return, ala the monkey's paw, and take those responsible to Jesus and let Him explain to you why it's in bad taste.

ok, i'm done ranting. sad that i can twist something like a friend's death into my own soapbox. i'm sorry, jeremy - you deserved a better remembrance than this. though somehow i think you might agree with most of this....

need to go put Christ's mandate into action, call some friends, show some love.
Æ

tunes: john prine - day is done

confessions of a crybaby

growing up, i was one of those kids. something wouldn't go my way, someone would say something mean, and the tears would come. seems like part of every recess was spent with me overreacting to some slight, real or imagined. someone took my favorite swing. someone called me fatty. someone got me out in four square. and i'd stomp off, lip quivering, eyes too blurry to see. other kids would roll their eyes, wondering what the big deal was. and, as children are wont to do, the more i reacted, the more they tried to get me to react. and thus i learned one of my first universal truths:

no one likes a crybaby.

eventually, this lesson seeped in and i stopped reacting. i still felt hurt, felt rejected, felt angry, but i knew better than to let anyone see that. slowly the teasing faded and life on the playground became carefree - as long as i swallowed what i was feeling and kept it to myself.

i sit here, preparing to go to jeremy's viewing/funeral/burial, wondering if maybe i learned my lesson too well. my emotions since brent called on thursday can best be descirbed as flat. no tears, just a general sense of exhaustion. i feel i don't know how to feel. i feel i don't know how to mourn. friends ask me how i'm doing and with pavlovian candor i answer, "as well as can be expected," because it's so much easier than the truth. and the truth is i'm not feeling much of anything except guilt over not feeling much of anything. am i so calloused that i cannot bother mustering up even empathy for the loss of others? am i so afraid of being hurt that i refuse to feel or at least show what i'm feeling?

and then i think about the missed opportunities, the visits put off to earn a couple of bucks, the words left unsaid because there's always next weekend. i think of the unfairness of it all and question the wisdom of God. why would He take a father and husband, someone on whom so many depend, instead of someone, say, like me, someone without those strong earthly ties? why take men like chad and mark and jeremy, whose absence leaves such deep chasms that can never be filled?

Father, scrape away this callous 'round my heart
remove the fear that keeps me from feeling
for if i cannot feel, i cannot love
let my heart break, the pain and embarrassment be damned
forgive what i have left undone
and spur me on to greater love
Æ

tunes: patty griffin - trapeze