Funeral

My aunt passed away last week and I attended her wake this evening, wearing my shoes on the wrong feet. She would have found that hysterical! My aunt, third from the left above, was a wonderful woman. My dad would tell me stories of her and the summers he would spend with her and family in "the country". She adored Nicholas, when she had the chance to see him she would shower him with love. She never met Addison but did know she was coming and had arrived. She was so friendly and loving, always loved to talk and catch up. She had been sick lately and getting progressively worse. She was in a coma for a period of time and apparently over the last few days she woke up and was smiling and as my dad's cousin said, someone came to take my aunt because she looked up and away, smiled and was gone- peacefully and perfectly. I hope I go the same way...surrounded by my family and in peace.
Funerals are a funny thing in my family. Literally...they tend to be funny. We are very "lucky", the funerals we attend are for members who die old. That is not to say that they are not sad events but more often than not the deceased has suffered and death actually brought peace. I think the worst part, as one of my high schoolers surprised me with last week put it, is for those of us left behind. We have to stay here and wonder and miss the deceased. But that's where the "funny" for us comes in. We're English and Irish and we deal with grief with humor. We tell stories that make us laugh so hard the only tears we have are those of laughter. We make jokes about the funeral home and the casket and often we plan out how we want our own wakes to go. Sounds sick, huh? I guess if you're an outsider and you don't understand my family, maybe it is. But from the inside it is the best way for us to relate our grief and feelings to one another.
Tonight was no different. Tonight I saw cousins and family members that I usually only see at the family reunion each year. Tonight we joked about the funeral home. We looked at pictures, like the one above, that showed my aunt with her siblings looking young but the "same" as she did the last time we saw her well. We talked about what we wanted to happen when we all passed. And all I could think about was what my dad's cousin said about someone coming to get my aunt just before she passed. What an awesome thought...one of the people that you love the most who has gone before you helps bring you into something so much better. Hopefully, when I go, whoever is leading me will let me know I have my shoes on the wrong feet.