Vicarious Rocky

This picture is Pat at Two Amigos celebrating her 40th birthday with us. We forced her to get the giant margarita at lunch and then peer pressured her into finishing it. She stayed late to sober up and came back to our house for cake and presents. I can't remember what we got her, but it was never as good as what Pat would buy all of us.

Pat was really good at buying presents because she was really good at understanding what people liked and then twisting that into a unique gift idea. As in, I love to drink Vodka, I am in Marketing, so she got me a picture coffee table book about the marketing history of Absolute Vodka. I mean, who comes up with something like that? Pat, that's who.

OK, now for the selfish part:

I am 36 and this is the first experience with death of someone I love. Well, except Willy the Dog. But human wise, Pat is the first. Nor can I remember many funerals. There was Aunt Katherine, Glady, and my Great Grandmother. I never knew my paternal grandparents. My Mom's folks are still alive. All my extended family are living. Crazy eh? What a sheltered life I live!

What I learned through Pat's death is that the services are so essential in letting go and moving through the shock and permanence of death. Before I went to the weekend events, I reminded myself that she was dead several times a day to reintroduce the shock. As in, "Pat. Wow. Still dead. Still not going to the film festival with me next weekend." It's like I couldn't or wouldn't say goodbye. I wanted to honor the importance and reality of her being truly missing and that seemed to be all I could come up with.

But the services and all the dedicated time to her -- the travel, the conversations, stories, small talk with friends and family, food -- really did bring closure. I guess that sounds obvious in retrospect, but I always believed the services were mostly to just help the family. I believed I was going to the services for them. And I suppose I did, but now I see how my participation was also for me.

Now it dawns on me that this process we have invented as humans is genius. Earl says he wants to be put under a tree near the end with some cookies and water, but no way. The weekend journey through honoring the dead is good stuff.