Thinking about things

Today was that memorial service I alluded to.

The woman's grown son (Heh, grown: he's probably at least 10 years older than I am, maybe even more than that, given that she and her husband married in 1954) made some comment about how the things towards the end of her life weren't happy (and that was all he said about it; I did notice the person who was responsible for a lot of the issues was not there), he also talked about a lot of happy memories of her.

The minister - not our minister, who had a commitment he couldn't get out of on short notice, and anyway, there was a long-time retired Presbyterian minister who had been a long time family friend, and our current minister hadn't really known her, so...it probably worked out for the best the R. did the service instead.

He talked about a lot of things, but one thing he emphasized was the importance of how church was "there" for each other, and yes, that's true. That's one of the big reasons I belong even through all the problems we've suffered, and the occasional dealing with a difficult person....I don't think I'd be nearly as happy, down here alone, without family, if I didn't have some group like that. I get on well with my colleagues but we don't really *socialize* together, and finding other groups are hard....most of the women my age, frankly are dealing with teen or tween kids and are caught up in that, or are caring for aging parents (thank God, so far, that is not my lot).

The five or six of us "church ladies" sat on the back row - as we always do in cases like this, regardless of whether it's a happy occasion like a potluck or a concert-with-reception, or a sadder one like a funeral with a lunch or reception afterward - so we can duck out right before the end and make sure everything's ready to go.

It's one of those things we do. It's almost always the same small group of us - there are maybe eight or ten women in the church who do this, whoever is available on a given day. I'm often there (always if it's a weekend or early-evening thing). I don't know. In the grand scheme of things it is a small thing but it also feels like something I *can* do that helps on some level. I know family members, when we served family lunch after a funeral, have commented on how it made things easier (and yes, I remember that from the one big family funeral - my maternal grandmother - that I attended).

We laughed and joked in the kitchen, and tested nibbles of the different things people had brought. (I did the jam bars, which are my "thing" and are the recipe I always get asked to make when there's some kind of reception. It's funny how we all more or less have "things" - recipes that come out well, are reliable, that people like, and so we make them.). And yet, yes, there was an edge to it. Periodically a couple of the women who had known the family longer than I had would go off in a knot and talk, hashing over what all happened.

I don't know. I don't know most of the people involved (I really only knew the woman and her husband) so I didn't join in. Also, a lot of the time, when stuff like this happens, I just don't have it in me to "drag" the person who did wrong; I may just shake my head sadly and say that it's a bad situation or something, but I'd rather focus on what I'm doing in the here and now. I'd rather move on than dwell on sad stuff that I can't do anything to fix.

It's one of those things I think I find uncomfortable because I am pretty close to my family and I can't quite imagine doing something like that. And I've lost some of my extended family - lots of older cousins, all my grandparents, all my aunts on one side - down through the years, and I'd love to have the family back and intact even though I know that's not possible.

Though I do also know sometimes when money gets involved things get strained in family. (And I confess: I hope my father lives a good number of years yet, and while I know he's made arrangements so both my brother and I will be helped...well, I don't look forward to the eventual divvying up of my parents' possessions. The only thing I might consider actually fighting for, if it came to that, was the treadle sewing machine that came from my mom's mom. My mom knows I want it, and my brother and sister-in-law know that. I doubt they'd try to argue for it.  And even if they want all the other furniture, I want that thing. There are a couple other things - an old rocking chair, the big old kitchen table - that I wouldn't turn down if I were offered them, but...yeah. I hope it's a while yet before it comes to that).

I found myself wondering if it was worse to have your family all gone, or to be estranged from them. I tend to think estrangement would be worse, though then again there is the hope of rapprochement in cases of estrangement....doesn't tend to happen often, though, based on what I've seen.

I think things like this make me extra melancholy these days (especially after my dad spending a week or so in the hospital, and several more in a rehab center): the woman who died was almost to-the-day two years older than my mother is.

I admit part of me, hearing what I heard of the family woes, wants to go into snarky 16-year-old mode and make stupid Tumblr-style jokes like "A family can sometimes be a single woman and 35 stuffed-toy unicorns" but I don't even quite have it in me to make cynical jokes to cover up my discomfort over the whole thing.

I dunno. I'm also thinking about the Sunday school lesson which I wrote (well, drawing heavily from a lesson over the same text that I used six or seven years ago; the current composition of my class is different from what it was then so it won't be a re-run). About Abraham and Sarah and having a child very late in life and the fundamental lesson being not to give up hope, because even late in life good things can happen for you and....I don't know. I want to believe that, that unlike what Fitzgerald or whoever it was said, American life DOES have a second act, and that maybe something good will happen in the future (instead of me just going about the same-old, same-old, which really, I do suppose I should be grateful for: solid employment and reasonable health, a little time to do what I want....but some days I admit it feels a little stale and I think some of my distress this fall has been "So, okay. I'm nearly 50 and this is all the impact I've made on the world?"). But yet, at the same time - sitting on the back pew with the other "church ladies," and realizing how doing stuff like this - being there to feed bereaved people, to provide a few minutes of casual fellowship before people go off and, in some cases, maybe never see each other again - is important to me and I think it's valuable, but it's something the world itself literally does not value at all. I once commented that some of my dislike of the post-tenure-review process is that a lot of the things most important to me, a lot of the "service" I do, doesn't matter in their checklist. (I don't even put the church stuff I do down, though I suspect I could include "serving on the Wesley Center board" seeing as that's a university-affiliated thing).

And that's the thing. How do you live when you have to fit a particular checklist, but the things important to you are not on the checklist, and some of the things on it are things that aren't important to you or all that desirable for you to do? And I do think there's something slightly....corrosive isn't quite the right word but it's close....about "hearing" on a regular basis that the things you do that are important to you aren't valuable, not in the world's eyes, and I'm not quite strong enough to say "forget the world, then" because I also have to live in it, and I can't quite deal with every PTR from now until I retire having something on it where I'm not "living up to potential" or some darn thing.

I suppose the answer is to stop caring about what other people think, but as I'm nearly 50 and haven't learned that yet, I doubt I will.

I dunno. I knew when I went into my career I'd never win a Nobel Prize or any darn thing like that but I admit some days I wish I had less of a feeling that what I am doing has been so very....forgettable.

Edited to add: a related thought, based on something I commented on on Twitter: there was a thread about Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an abolitionist who was fundamentally martyred for his beliefs, and the person starting the thread commented that "outside of Lincoln and John Brown, you don't hear too much about individual white abolitionists" and yes, maybe that's true. (Lincoln gets press because he was President, of course, and John Brown, I'd argue, because of the sensationalism surrounding him - his "burn it all down" mentality and the fact that some might even go so far as to call him a terrorist in his techniques*)

(*Side fact: the town where I grew up more or less claims Brown as one of their own even if he was actually born in Connecticut. I am not sure how I feel about Brown; the education I got about him in school history mostly glossed over the more violent stuff he did, and I generally think that violence is not the best way of achieving your ends, now.)

But it occurs to me: I recently learned that "Well-behaved women seldom make history" is NOT the "don't follow social niceties, or you will be forgotten" rallying cry that it was used as when I was in college, but perhaps more a lament that people who mostly lived their lives within the bounds of the law but worked to change injustices rather than overthrow the entire system are often glossed over in favor of the flashier or more violent types and....yes.

Perhaps, I opined, the reason many abolitionists are unheard of today is that they were either women, people of strong religious conviction*, or both.

(*Many, many, many members of what might now be called Mainline Denominations were pretty strongly abolitionist and a lot of abolitionist leaders were also ministers)

And so maybe, yes: maybe you can still do what is right and good but not do it in a flashy way, and even if the World ignores it, it still helps, and what is important is not the getting-noticed, but the actual helping. (Eleanor Shellstrop couldn't earn 'good points" when she was doing good in order to earn them; the good had to be selflessly motivated).

I don't know, though I will note it's frustrating when "job performance" and "things I do that are genuinely important to me" don't have more overlap.