Lakes Are Holy Places

This frog (lizard?) greets people who enter the bathroom of the pizza shop I visited with my family on Friday. It was a little surprising to open the door and find that face staring back.

It's really not a very appropriate picture to start this post, but it's literally the only one I have. I took almost no bloggable photos yesterday, which was crammed with people people people and lots of family time. In fact I didn't even take pictures of the family, which now that I think about it was probably an omission. I was paying too much attention to "peopling," to use a term I learned from Bug.

The memorial service went well. We had some of June's favorite music playing softly in the background as everyone gathered, like Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell. Then whoever wanted to speak got up and did so, and I did indeed deliver my remarks, though I don't know how effective they were. I have a tendency to over-intellectualize everything (not that I am very intellectual) and let's put it this way -- although they choked me up, I'm not sure they affected anyone else the same way. My brother and stepbrother both spoke, as well as two of June's sisters and my nephew. He delivered the best line of the day when, as the last speaker, he said, "I guess there's nothing to do now but pour her in the lake with Pawpaw."

And that was indeed the plan. My stepmother had been cremated, as had my dad after he died back in 2016. June had saved Dad's ashes, so in the evening we took both his cremains and hers down to the lake and poured them together, in a single mingled stream, into the water. They spread in a fantastic chrysanthemum cloud, almost like a firework, before dissipating in the water. I can't think of a better place for them -- they loved sitting down at the lake and sharing an evening cocktail, and spent a lot of time fishing there and gazing out at the water.

Just like when my brother and I scattered my mom's ashes in the lake where we grew up (a different body of water), I took a photo afterwards. To me, these images always seem so full of God, whatever we conceive him/her/it to be. Any lake in Florida is automatically a holy place of sorts, as far as I'm concerned.

In between the service and the ashes, we chatted with June's six siblings and their spouses, along with other family members and friends. Basically I spent the whole afternoon mingling, which really took it out of me. I think I hold my own pretty well in any social situation, but after a while it's just so tiring -- especially when the people involved are not people I know well. I met June's brothers and sisters several times in my life and many of them had very good things to say about her marriage to my dad and her relationship with all of us kids, so it was rewarding in that sense, but it was also exhausting.

Last night, the family stayed up talking (quite loudly!) into the night but I retreated to my room and went to bed. Of course I'm on a different timetable from everybody else, so that's part of my fatigue too.

Today I'm off to Bradenton to see Dave's sister and parents, and I'm still a little unsure how the rest of this trip is going to play out. I'm not sure if I'm staying down there or coming back to Tampa tonight, for example. I fly back to London tomorrow night, but the real business here is pretty much over and my stepbrother has already departed, along with all the siblings. I'd anticipated needing to sign documents or do business stuff but I don't think any of that is ready yet.

It's decompression time, I guess.