I was reminded of a former colleague today, when I swore to myself about attending another, yes, another, funeral. Except that I put the f'ing word in front of funeral (in my head) and then remembered this former colleague, who, when I would use this particular terminology, would look at me directly and say, "Hilary, funerals do not fuck."

Well, okay, they don't, and neither do runners or toilet seats or car doors or rain, but it's a useful modifier as well as a verb.

The former colleague was from The Netherlands (not from Holland. Holland is a province in The Netherlands, as we were reminded every time we said he was from Holland because we knew it would stir his ire.) and was of a very literal mind. Besides correcting verb/modifiers, he tried very hard to make a lot of inorganic compounds and was quite successful at it. He married an opera singer who divorced him, and then he lived in a bush for a few weeks before he house-sitted for a couple his former wife knew. Once they returned he moved back to the bush for a while, then moved in with the Ex. He graduated, got to move to England to work for a well-known chemist, and lasted six months. Graduate work didn't suit him. He moved back to Canada, married another woman after their baby died, and then she divorced him too. To my knowledge he fell off the face of the earth, although I did see him at a conference out west once. It was very strange. He didn't talk to me, he just put his hand on my shoulder as he walked by.

This has nothing to do with going to a funeral today. The woman who died was 38 years old, with two children ages 16 and 13, husband, large Italian family. We went to the funeral because the deceased sister is married to Hub's nephew, and yes, it seems a tenuous connection but it isn't at all.

The mass was quite long, and then I went to the mausoleum with Hub's sister and brother, while Hub took The Darlings home to feed their little faces. The mausoleum was very beautiful, and so many names on the walls with plaques and pictures and "Riposo in pace" and flowers and extra pictures of babies and children so that the dead know that new family members have arrived...there are lots of big windows and light and stained glass. It's lovely. It's terrible to see a coffin pushed into a hole in the wall, and terrible to hear the wails of the female family members as this is done. If you're outside at a gravesite the sounds are carried away by the wind, but inside the sounds echo around you and go through your head and back a few times. It was all terribly sad.

I have honestly had it with funerals though, and would prefer that I not have to go to another one for at least a year. Even then it will be too soon, too reminiscent of the one before or the one before that, too many things said that sound the same as last time, and most of all, a Catholic funeral here in town is almost always at the same funeral home, and so far, all the people we know who've died here have been in the same room for the visitations. So you go in, and it's the same room as Zia was in, or the same room Maria was in or the same room as....well, it doesn't matter. We are familiar with that room at the funeral home now, rather more familiar than we'd like to be.