too many memorials

 Been to way too many memorial services for people I cared about in recent years.

Tonight was the one for D., who had been a professor at my university in the Theater department and a friendly acquaintance bordering on friend. (With D., you FELT like you were his friend even if you didn't have that much contact with him)

I was mostly okay - I had cried over this back in March when he died. But one thing nearly did me in:

 an acapella group sang. I think some of the performers had been his students. And if they didn't use this arrangement of it (it's a Dolly Parton song), it was very close to it

And it got me, because first of all, acapella music always makes me a little emotional - I love what the human voice, unaided can do (perhaps because I am not a very good singer myself).

It's a good memorial service song, because the idea of missing the person but going on is in there, but also - oh Lord, it's kind of just life now, isn't it?

 

"It's been a long dark night/ And I've been waiting for the morning/ It's been a long hard fight/ But I see a brand new day a-dawning....I've been lookin' for the sunshine/'Cos I ain't seen it in so long....Everything's gonna work out fine..."

And yeah. Maybe if Delta variant hadn't happened, or maybe if vaccine uptake here was better, or maybe if COVID really WAS just a bad flu/pneumonia and didn't have weird and sneaky neuro and vascular effects, I would feel that more strongly, that we were pulling out of the dark times. But I also admit a lot of the time now I feel like one of the Israelites in the desert somewhere long about Year 10 of the 40-year trek, and wondering when or if things would get better. 

 

So that played doubly on my emotions.

But I did cry at the very end - D. had lived in New Orleans for some years, and loved the culture, and it had been arranged for the marching band to do a "second line" - marching around the building where the memorial service was - and anyone who wanted to was welcome to march with them (I didn't; I don't see well in the dark and was afraid of stumbling, and also at that point I was standing with a couple women even older than me from church, and neither of them felt up to it, so we watched.) And then, I don't know why, but I cried. I get that the tradition of the second line is you are celebrating the person's life and, I guess, getting ready to move on with your own. 

 

But yeah. I don't want to have to deal with any more memorial services for a while. And I would like to meet a few new people to make up for all the ones I've lost