Technical Difficulties, the Memorial, and closure.
Created: 2023-04-28
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Friends - Memorial / Celebration of Life. Gads that was easy and hard. But life is for the living, and even with the passing of the a beautiful person... life goes on.
- Easy:
- A lot of people showed ≈80+ with probably half from out of town.
- It was great seeing the people -- each bringing back great memories. Different eras, places we'd lived. People that Melissa had touched (or I had). Many of them connecting up and chatting with each other. And making wonderful new connections. "Oh, of course those two would get along." The people made it work.
- My brother did an excellent job of running it. And the planned and spontaneous testimonials were perfect. Many funny, lots of great stories. My friend Richard summed it up -- when every picture has her smiling from the soul, when that many people from all over tell the same fundamental stories about how kind, giving she was, and how she touched them -- then that's a life well lived. Even if too short.
- My pre-taping my 3 little stories / allegories worked well - I was able to be nerdy AV guy -- and still share things that I wanted about her, and just hint at a fraction of what an incredible loss the world suffered when she passed.
- Our friend Gina had helped with a video (picture deck movie, and just all around support). But that fucking video montage of photos with her music at the end, just had me bawling. Too many memories/emotions.
- The food from Lupe's Tortilla was perfect -- everyone seemed to enjoy. When it whittled down to 20 or so, we moved back to the house, and continued it until everyone went home and I crashed about 11:00.
- It was a wonderful send off. She was so loved and lovable. And it was a great party with great people.
- Hard:
- I had all sorts of technical difficulties. You couldn't see the screen the way it was facing, so had to re-orient the room. It took a while to get everything setup. Then I couldn't get Facebook Live to work. Having worked with Facebook, they are a lousy, arrogant and incompetent organization that doesn't know how to write software, support it, or manage user privacy -- and all their incompetence resulted in lousy error unhelpful error message that nobody could figure out -- and just increased the stress. But whatever, we'd just record and worry about it later.
- Of course you want it to be perfect -- and nothing ever is. Things I had cut got re-added, the venue worked well, but wasn't perfect. Things I'd said, didn't all come our perfectly. I felt like I didn't have enough pictures of our neighbors, or other individuals. Oh, I forgot to Gina enough credit for her help. And so on. You can't do justice to 55 years in 55 minutes... so it can never be perfect. But it was good enough, and she would have loved it.
- Most of all, the guest of honor was missing. She would have loved it, and loved being there. I can manage grief most of the time... but the brutality and finality of the loss when you're having a party for her and withhout her? And everyone and everything reminds you of that loss. The people made it great, and all were helpful. Then I had to go to bed alone, again, and get lousy sleep (another night of crying in self pity like I hadn't had that bad since night 2 after she passed), knowing that tomorrow I wake up and keep moving on with life without her. Time to clean up, keep shifting my life from her/us to just me, and never forgetting, but having to stop living in the 32 wonderful years of my past. And figure out what the present and future is going to be.
| Whew... Yesterday was Melissa's Memorial (Day 38). It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... we had everything before us, now we have nothing before us...
In the end, I had a great party, with great friends, it went off better than could be expected... and yet, the guest of honor was a no-show, as she will be for every future important event. She would have loved it. And I both had a great time seeing the friends and family that showed up and laughed and remembered and celebrated, and am more torn up than since the morning after she passed. It was full of contradictions; Gads that was easy and hard, fun and tragic, love and loss, sorrowful and joyful. She had a wonderful life and touched so many. My friend summed it up, when every picture has her smiling from the soul, and all those people could tell stories of how considerate she was and how she touched them -- then that is a life well lived. But life is for the living, and even with the passing of the most beautiful person I ever knew... life goes on. The past was about we/us... and the present/future is about me. Today is the first day of the rest of my life... |
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Tags: Grief
