Disclaimer: All sexual acts involve adults, over the age of 18, and involve mother/son incest (in case you wound up here by accident). I hope you enjoy.
~~~~~~~~~~
January 19th, 2013
For the memorial service, Mom wore a plain black dress, black hose and black shoes, with a little black hat on top to cover the bun she'd arranged her hair into, that I didn't even know she owned. Patti wore the grey sweater I'd gotten her for Christmas, and a black skirt, over black shoes, and simply had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Neither wore much makeup, realizing that what tears do to mascara is never pretty. They were still gorgeous in my eyes, though. It bothered me a little that I was feeling horny on what was going to be a sad day, but Mom moaning my name the night before was still replaying itself in my head.
Because of the extra costs, Mom had decided not to have a viewing of Dad's body during the memorial, and he had actually been cremated 4 days before. Various family members were allowed into the mortuary prior to this for a short viewing, but since nothing had been done in terms of embalming and makeup and so forth, his body was cold and looked blotchy, and I heard several people regretted seeing him that way. I didn't attend, since I'd seen his body the day he died, and that was enough for me. His urn sat at the front of the mortuary chapel on a small stand where the coffin would normally have been, next to a portrait of him the mortuary had produced.
In place of the viewing of the body, Mom had prepared some posterboards, with montages of different photos of Dad from over the years, and people walked among those, as they were set up on easels. Mom wanted people to see and remember Dad healthy. I even got a chance to look through them, many of them pictures that had sat in photo albums for years, others more recent prints from cell-phone and digital camera shots. Mom had done a great job. There must have been a dozen people who commented to me that I looked just like my Dad did when he was younger. Even looking at pictures of him at that age, I couldn't see it, but thanked them anyway. Dad had curly brown hair, mine was curly blonde, I was taller than him, I didn't think our faces looked similar. I just don't see it.
I lost count of how many hugs and handshakes I received, from people who knew Dad or Mom but who barely knew me or didn't know me at all. I know they meant well, but it just felt obligatory, rather than comforting. Patti stayed by my side, and I'd introduce her to those people whose names I knew, but many were just strangers to me, making an introduction rather awkward. I was amazed at how full the chapel at the mortuary was. Dad was loved and friends with many people.
We aren't particularly religious people, thinking of ourselves as spiritual instead, so it was the coordinator for the mortuary who gave the primary eulogy, based on interviews he'd done with some of Dad's friends and family who weren't willing to get up and give their own speech. I cringed at some parts, knowing they were surely boilerplate text he'd said for dozens of people before Dad. But would a priest, from a church we never attended, have done better?
Mom bravely got through her own speech, although there were tears streaming down her face by the end. I hugged her tight before I took her place at the podium and as I looked out at the audience, I could tell she was hardly alone. Both of my grandmothers were wiping away tears with Kleenex, and I didn't have time to count how many others. It was then that a wave of sadness washed over me, but combined with the knowledge that my Dad was really still there, in the hearts of all these people, so the emotion in the room actually gave me strength.
I started my own speech by looking skyward, and saying "I love you, Dad, and miss you," and proceeded to talk for about 10 minutes about what a great Dad he was, and how I wanted to dedicate my life to making him proud of me. My voice broke a couple of times, but I managed not to cry. Still exercising that stiff upper lip, you know?
Feeling composed, I then improvised a riff about how Dad's life energy wasn't really gone, how a bit of his transferred to everyone he interacted with, just as ours transferred to him, and thus he was still part of everyone who loved him, and not truly gone, earning me a weak smile from my mom. This summarized the closest I come to a religious belief or philosophy, that all life and love is essentially energy, which is exchanged between us, and persists past the death of an individual. I know, kinda sounds like 'The Force', but subtler, no levitating rocks or energy blasts making 90 degree turns, although I do think prayer and wishes can somehow draw on that energy in ways science doesn't explain. Not for everyone, but it's what I believe, and it comforted me to know that part of who I am comes from my Dad's influence and energy, not just his genetics, and that I was at that moment surrounded by people who likewise had part of Dad's energy in them, not just memories of him.
I admit I tuned out most of the speeches that followed mine, just sitting on the front bench, holding Patti's hand on my right, and Mom's on my left, filing my speech into my soul, and focussing my heart on these two women I loved and, I admitted to myself, desired.
And soon, the service was over. I helped load the posterboards, Dad's urn and portrait, and some of the flowers that people had sent into Mom's trunk, and drove her and Patti home. My grandparents took charge of the remaining flowers and met us there.
We hosted a get-together at our house, similar to a wake, almost standing room only, as various people filtered through the house, grabbed comfort food people had brought, then walked out to our deck and back yard, as the first floor of the house simply couldn't hold everyone. I itched to retreat to my room with Patti and my friends, but we stayed downstairs to mingle. I got a lot of compliments on my speech, and wound up explaining my energy philosophy to several clusters of people who wanted to hear more. I don't think I convinced a single person, but I rarely do. Mom was sitting in the living room between my grandmothers, and gave me a little smile each time I circulated by her.
As the sun set around 6:15, people started heading home, and it was just down to my grandparents, my mom and my friends, and we all kind of crashed in the living room after we cleaned up the kitchen and put all the leftovers away. Dad's urn was already up on the mantel over the fireplace, the portrait of him sitting beside it.
Grandma Marion asked, "So, you mentioned that Tom had chosen some places for scattering his ashes?"
Mom nodded, "Yes, his are all on the ocean. Galveston Beach in the Gulf, another one's in California to take care of the Pacific, and the last is in Maine, at Acadia National Park, which is on an island there. Tom loved all three of those places. The mortuary has already divided his ashes into three separate bags, so we don't have to divide it ourselves, and I got a travelling urn, with its own certificate, so I can travel with just the portion I would scatter."
"So you have to travel to all of those places?" Grandma asked.
"Yes, but I'm not going to hurry it," Mom said. "I'd like to do them on significant dates like his birthday, our anniversary, and such. I thought we could make Galveston a big family vacation with you two and Tom's brothers, since we wouldn't have to fly to get there. Our anniversary falls on Memorial Day this year, although the Galveston beach will probably be crowded, then. I've got to check availability in the hotels then, or maybe even rent the beach house you used to go to when the boys were kids, although I'm not sure there's room for all of us, from the way Tom described it. Maybe rent two instead. Then we can all go out on the beach at night and take turns scattering him into the surf."
"I'd like that. Thank you, Tina. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know."
