the wearing of the black

Funeral duty...
As a teenager I was devoted to the idea of suffering and delighted in reading dark literature: anything fraught with angst. I wasn't exactly goth, not sure any of us knew what that was, but death lived in my mind as a romantic ideal. I found a ring in my mother's jewelry box that looked like a coffin. I found out that it had been her high school ring, and immediately felt it expressed my high school experience perfectly and didn't take it off for several years!

At that time, I fantasized about my twilight years, when I would don a black hat, with a veil, of course, and attend funerals. I envisioned myself picking out funerals of people who seemed to have died with few friends and/or relations. I would be the intriguing yet familiar figure in black who grieved the lonely.

Reading obituaries is something of a refined habit of many of my family members. So it was not my twisted teenage sense of the world that led me to read them daily. Over the years, learning to read between the lines of the sometimes sparse death notices, I found I could discern much about the life of the departed. At least, I could make up any circumstance I desired and put to use my creative imagination.

I am not sure if it is a natural part of the aging process, but I don't derive the same pleasure I used to from reading angst-riddled literature, though I do still find myself more often than not watching dark movies. And, unfortunately, I don't enjoy attending funerals nearly as much as I imagined I would when I was a teenager.

In the past few years it has fallen to me to represent my family at funerals for people who might as well be strangers. Usually I am tangentially related to these folks, but I have been to several funerals where I had never met the dearly departed while he/she was still alive. Perhaps more unsettling, I was meeting the rest of this person's family at the funeral. I don't have a fabulous hat with a veil though I do own a fair amount of black.

Last week turned into another funeral week for me, so I dutifully found suitable black clothing and tried to steel myself for the experience.

The first one laid me low and it took several days to recover... I don't have time to discuss it here now, but perhaps, one day, I will have the emotional energy to capture the experience in words.

For now, let me say that I am looking forward to coming up with more cheerful ways to celebrate my retirement, someday, if I ever do get to retire!