The Wake

My friends father passed away and I attended the wake yesterday. We'll go to the funeral this morning. I'm happy to be there to comfort my friend as I know the pain of losing your father and I know how difficult the wake can be. Its one of those customs that while maybe necessary can be very trying. My friend, her mother and her daughter all shared how they had taken Xanax to help them get through it. At least it doesn't smell.

I remember my father's wake. He had 2 actually. We had one in CT where he lived and worked and then we brought him back to PA where he grew up and where his mother, my grandmother still lived. My mother essentially did that for her. Its hard to lose a son. But I drank through the whole thing. I wasn't rip roaring drunk. I saved that for afterwards but I couldn't hit the funeral home without having something first. The CT wake was very difficult but nice too. Since all our extended family was back in PA, CT was all friends, of my parents, of my brothers and mine. So it was small and intimate. His collegues from work came and shared stories of my Dad. I had had no idea how much he was respected and liked and how he mentored the younger scientists. So in CT it was sad but it was uplifting as well and more of a celebration of his life.

When we got to PA it was much more emotional and difficult. My Dad died young of non Hodgins lymphoma, he was only 58 and while we knew that was essentially a death sentence it was still unexpected. By the time we got to PA I had contracted a bacterial infection that started in my ears so I couldn't hear very well. I had spent the week before his death at his bedside. I was drinking, alot. I had been taking care of communications with everyone while he was in the hopsital because my mother could not. I was making a lot of decisions as the oldest. My mother could not do alot of things and she was drinking alot too. I was concerned for my young children and trying to protect them but yet was incapable. The wake was huge with the entire town coming out. My Dad was the star of the family and it was a big family. All the Tetis, (aunts), cousins, uncles were there as well as Kums (godparents), neighbors of my grandmothers current and in the last 50 years. He was brilliant and had left the dying steel town with a full scholarhip to MIT. His first grade teacher showed up. My grandfather had been big in the union so there were alot of those people there too. Like I said, it was a small town. All this with an open casket. That was tough. I don't know why my mother did that. My dad always said to just lay him out on the old green couch on trash day or to place his ashes in a Skippy jar. He was very irreverant. Instead he had a full Serbian Orthodox funeral complete with wailing Babas and everything. And of course lots of drinking at the Serbian club afterwards. That he would have enjoyed, though my grandmother was mortified as she always was. The whole thing was very surreal to me. Between losing my father, being sick, drinking and I believe my sister in law supplied me with some valium as well, I really was not present.

So yesterday after the meeting a young woman shared with me how after 9 months of sobriety she had smoked pot. She's been struggling with the rest of life thing. And I shared how at the wake for my friends father, I wondered if I had to go through the same thing again, would it be okay to take some xanax. And I really am on the fence about this. I know what the answer is, but I also know how much we don't want to face reality sometimes. And shaking everyone's hand and accepting condolences is a really hard thing to get through. I've got a while to think about this though and until then, I know what the answer is...