Funeral.

My uncle died last week. My mother's only brother. He spent more than two years battling and succumbing to an aggressive brain cancer. I don't know name it has been given, but they give people a 5% chance of surviving 24 months at whatever stage he was diagnosed. He beat those odds. In December of 2010, he was given 4 to 6 months. He survived into January of 2012. As the months passed, the pain increased and so did his medication dosages. You could see that he was fading. Or at least my aunts could. Until that last week he seemed about the same to me, a bit groggy, but still about the same.

Then on Saturday, on the morning before my Cousin's wedding, it all ended. I've stated that I have mixed feelings about it. He lived a sad life and had a sad death. Now he was no longer in pain. Were I a man of faith in a just universe, I think that this would test my faith. But only until I was able to convince myself that he would be getting Sky Cake at this very minute and that all was right again.

What really matters is my Aunts. They strove heroically to make sure that their only brother's last weeks and months were as full as they could make them. Concerts and roadtrips and everything else they could conceive. They got him out of the house and moving in an attempt to make the best of a rotten situation and I think to keep his spirits from flagging. I don't think they ever told him how bad his situation was. There was the implication that he may not be able to fully comprehend. Whatever. I feel that they did right, as hope can be a fragile thing.

I wasn't close to my uncle, so no need for condolences. I've spent most of my life on the far side of the state, when not the country. I would only ever see my uncle a few hours every few weekends when we came up to visit the family as a whole. Both sides, and those hours were divided between all of our familial obligations. When you're in town, people get offended if you don't drop by for a visit. Never mind that they don't ever bother to swing by your corner of the world.

We would only pass a few words of greeting. Hey, how are you, fine and you, fine. Before settling to watch television quietly and wait for the visit to pass. I'm not much of a conversationalist, and neither was my uncle. We held little in common besides – though maybe more than I thought. I won't utter any blather about how I wished I would have gotten to know him better. This would be empty prattle on my part. A lie. I am not one for connections for the sake of a misplaced sense of duty.

He had suffered from mild brain-damage. My mother went through a laundry list of possible causes – each was sadder than the last. From illness to falling and striking his head. He managed to graduate high school and hold a job for 20 years. The latter I have yet to manage, and beats my best attempt by more than a factor of ten. His illness though left him with a speech impediment. Once, when I was eight or nine, I made a joke about it. I don't recall getting punished or yelled at. I never did it again. Once was well more than enough. Even as a bratty smartassed child I knew that, though I had yet to learn that sometimes it was better to let a stupid joke go even though it seemed to be really funny at the time. Honestly, sometimes I still forget this lesson.

My uncle was generous and stable, whatever his flaws. He was a fixture of the community, if not a pillar. He was well loved by his family. I doubt that when the time comes, my funeral won't be so well attended. I am an abrasive introvert with hermetic tendencies. My circle of friends is small. I am OK with this. I prefer it that way.

As it was, I felt about the same about my uncle's illness and death as I would any acquaintance. Sad, but the sadness was more of an abstract. Like how one would feel if a friend of a friend were to die. More sympathy for those others than a sense of personal loss. I may not have had a connection with my uncle, but my mother and her sisters and most of my cousins, and my Grandmother most of all, he was a part of their life. Many of cousins grew up around him, seeing him daily. He and my Grandmother lived together. She's from stoic German farmer stock. Hers has been a rough life as well. I think that in the end that the final death brought a sense of relief.

This leads finally to the funeral itself.

Funerals are there for the comfort of the living. They do the departed no good, but allow those who were left behind a chance to gather and grieve. I don't think I want a funeral. I'd just like to be dumped into a hole and buried. No coffin or chemicals. Then have a tree planted over atop me. Something natural where I go back to where I came from in the most profound and literal way. The best way for the atoms that make up my body to rejoin the universe. That is for me. Now back to my uncle.

I've been to one other funeral in my life, my Great Grandmother's back in the 1990s. She died after a long bout with bone cancer while in her 90s. I was in high school. Hearing of her death left me with that 'punched in the gut' feeling. I can still remember some of the experience but not too much, bits and pieces mostly. What she looked like in the casket and the meal following. Who knows how much else, and what is real and what manufactured. Which details have changed over the years as memories have rubbed up against one another and merged. Was it a sunny day? Was the church full and as cavernous as I remember?

Along with five of the other nephews I was a pallbearer for my uncle. I was a part of the funeral ceremony. Thankfully for us, they have nifty carts for the casket. There is very little actual bearing of the pall, and most of that is into and out of the hearse. According to the Pastor my uncle had passions for Coke, Sweets and Pizza. More than one of us cursed these passions and wished that he prefered rice cakes, salad and exercise. We were there as an honor guard of sorts, to walk beside and 'guide' the casket as it left the church and entered the chapel. We were expected to be there an hour early to greet the guests and prepare.

That was to be my job. My anxiety kicked in. It does when I feel trapped. And here I was for an indeterminate length of time with no back door to flee to. So I sat off to the side as the various friends and family made their way in. I only really recognize the more immediate family, aunts and uncles and cousins. When it comes to great aunts and second cousins, well at best I've met many of those people only once or twice in my life. They were unknown faces. Maybe I had heard the names in the past and maybe not. They're family, but no more part of my life than is Christina Hendricks. Though she is most welcome to introduce herself.

We were gathered for the final viewing before the service began. One by one we were trooped by my uncle's casket. To say goodbye I suppose. The purpose of the ceremony wasn't explained. I'm not really one for goodbyes.

I didn't touch the body. Nor did I get to close. I didn't want the experience. Plus, there are far too many horror movies kicking around in my mind and revving up my superstitious monkey-brain. As I stood and looked at what remained of my uncle, my mind conjured a powerful image of him waking up and lunging at me with his hands open. I moved on quickly, opting to allow the next person in line deal with the wrath of zombie-uncle while I high-tailed it to safety.

After that the family gathered into a small classroom for a prayer/pep talk by the Pastor. I don't really recall the exact contents beyond Jesus is awesome. It was a repeated theme through out the day. The affirmation of faith was not unexpected.

I was raised with a somewhat obscure off-shoot branch of Christianity. For years I tried to adhere to faith. I didn't want to let that part of my life go. But I think too much, and read too much and finally came to the conclusion that the story was too circular for my liking. In order to buy in, you had to take some of the given material as granted, and I had reached the so-called age of 'independent verification of facts.' I shun descriptive adjectives when applying them to myself.

My mind and outlook are constantly shifting as I listen and read and ponder. But Militant Agnostic seems good, I don't know and neither do you. I do find myself being hostile towards the die-hard self-righteous religious types. Especially those who were just lucky enough to have been born into the 'true faith' without having ever had to explore the whole vast realm of the human spiritual universe before making up their minds.

I am ever questioning and unbelieving. In my writing, many of my characters tend to share these traits with me. I think I will trust more in science until God Almighty, the eternal asshole that he is, gets off his ass and sets the world straight in no uncertain terms. Give us evidence that we can all verify and share. That we can record and review and discuss. Nothing secret or personal – the experience should be shared by the whole of humanity and repeated for every generation. If God created us in his image and likeness, God should know better than to allow a bunch of stupid monkeys such as we to play a game of politicized gossip over the course of hundreds of generations by schizophrenics with a cause.

Until he fixes his vastly flawed system, he may eat a bowl of fuck. For this, if there is a hell then according to Christian teaching, I am going there. Depending on who's take is to be believed, I won't be alone.

As such, I've not been to church in years. In the future, I would like to sit in on other services for all the various faiths and sects. To get this basic human experience. To observe and perhaps record. I've noticed with the Lutherans, unlike my own experience, that they sit while singing hymns. I wonder how many other branches of Christianity do this and why. My own sect always stood. Baptists seem to as well. Do Muslims and Jews sing at their services? How about Hindus and Pagans?

I don't know about other funeral services in other faiths and cultures, how they are arranged. This one involved prayers and poetry and music. The pastor read selections from the Bible. Generally the service was cheerful and positive. I would like to suppose that this is how all Lutheran services are, focus on the good rather than the bad. In my mind this would be far better than those fear-mongers who forever harp on eternal damnation and hellfire and brimstone. Peddling hope is far more just than selling fear.

The Pastor spoke of my uncle's bravery in the face of adversity. I don't know if he spoke truly or if he was being flowery and painting a good face on the last to years of waiting. Then there was the promise of heaven. Many different faiths have a paradise that is held in trust for the true believers. The Jews invented heaven after they were conquered by the Greeks in order to keep their citizens from adopting Hellenistic culture. They taught that the faithful will meet God. Some Muslims believe that martyrs will be awarded a number of Virgins for years of awkward and traumatizing sex. While the Mormons are said to believe that they will become the God of their own universe. Or maybe they'll spend an eternity with their family. I'm not quite sure, I've heard both. Maybe one is for the men and the other for the women. Mormonism seems to be divided based on sex in many ways.

The Lutherans, at least judging by this Pastor, only promise beer and pizza with dead relatives. Oh, and an end to worldly complaints. Something to look forward to, and not really so far removed from reality that it would be impossible to believe. Life just keeps going on, only with all of the ups and no downs. I quite understand the appeal of this sort of belief. It is nice to think that there is some sort of cosmic justice or karma balancing the universe and rewarding the righteous. Even if the system doesn't make too much sense to me.

I have to wonder if it is just assumed at funerals that the recently departed will have made the cut and gained entry. How stringent are the criteria really? Will the preacher/pastor/priest/imam or whatever look down and say “well that dude was an asshole! Good riddance!”? Are the rose colored glasses assumed for the duration? We have a tradition of not speaking ill of the dead.

Following the funeral and the service graveside(in this case we used the chapel in the cemetery) the family and friends gather for a meal. Americans love to eat. Ham, Scalloped potatoes, beans and bread. Not to mention the rainbow of jello molds and salads. There are few things in life better than a substantial meal and feeling pleasantly full. You feel as if you're holding onto life. After the sad business of burying a loved one a meal seems that much more important.

Afterward.

You can learn a great deal about a fellow human being by pawing through their possessions. This is the basis of Archeology as the adherents uncover lost civilizations. What were the desires of the people and what did they believe? What sorts of things did they value? The same holds true with my uncle.

My grandmother asked us all to look through his things and take what we like. My uncle loved movies and music and had a fair-sized collection of DVDs and CDs, not to mention VHS cassettes and Audio cassettes. I wasn't the first through, or the last, so I picked a few of his films and a handful of cds that interested me.

Most of the music were by classic rock bands from the 80s and more recent pop-country stars. I think he had a dozen disks by the band Alabama. And at least 4 copies of ZZ Top's greatest hits. That was another thing about him, he was extremely fond of having back-up copies of everything – the man had hundreds of cassette tapes, many copies of albums he had purchased. His movie collection was even more diverse, ranging from love stories to action. But most were modern, those movies that came out during his lifetime. I personally snagged the Smokey and the Bandit collection. All seven movies in one box. Bad idea? Who would waste their money on that kind of crap? My uncle. I cannot really look down upon the collection much, I've knowingly purchased boxed sets that were bad and some which were much worse.

Finally there was his library of books. Most are hardcovers, not a one has been read. He, like much of the family, wasn't a reader. But he seemed to buy books almost obsessively. I cannot fault him with that, I do the same and have a substantial library of books that I will probably NEVER read myself. I just keep adding to the collection. It seems that he would hear someone mention a book and then go out and buy that book. I have done this exact same thing. Many times. I grab books that look like they might be interesting and often squirrel them away for a later date when I'm in the mood to read them.

My uncle had a substantial collection of porn. This didn't surprise me, I stumbled upon part of it when I was in high school some fifteen years back. The collection has grown since then. But to remember this changes my view of the man, that he was a man with all of the urges and needs. It makes my uncle less abstract for me and fills him out as a person. Like many men he yearned for female companionship, or at the very least sex. Biology is a powerful driver in human nature. Still, I think that the Aunts may have been shocked by the discovery. I wonder if the revelation would have altered the Pastor's funeral oration or opinion.

There he would be awaiting in the afterlife with beer, pizza and porn.

He was obsessive with his collecting and acquiring – even beyond the vale of movies and music. We found set upon set of drill bits and screw-drivers. Multiple copies of each, all the same, and most unopened. He collected them in what seemed to be madness. Why would he need drills or grinders? Or entire bins of tacks meant to hold down electric wires.

Then the revelation came out that my uncle wanted to be an Electrician. I don't know where he got the idea and why he clung onto that. Maybe he dreamed that he could master the skills. A noble thought, to try and improve yourself. The mom and her sisters don't think that he could manage it with his limitations. But that was his dream and more power to him. Life holds little meaning by itself. It is up to us to instill meaning into life, and we do this with goals and dreams and how we interact with the world including those around us. My uncle did this as well as anyone. So there he is, there he was. He inhabited that gray area between hope and despair.

The world will keep going.