A Life in 30 Minutes

Please forgive me - I wrote this on Tuesday but forgot to publish it until just now. I'm publishing it at approximately the time I finished it, in the past.

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Funerals are always interesting. I've only been to a small handful, but I have first- and second-hand accounts of a number more. I don't typically find them depressing, though I frequently find them fascinating. Usually, my mourning - my breaking down and crying - is done beforehand. I did cry at the funeral today, but I suppose that can be excused.

It was interesting, though, listening to a minister trying to summarize my grandmother's 90-odd years of life into 30 minutes, and still have time in it for a psalm and a couple of prayers. He concentrated on the environment she fostered in the people around her. She was always calm, always quiet, always listening... But you never for a second didn't know exactly where you stood with her. She was one of the most proper, most friendly ladies I knew.

I kept on thinking of that postcard I transcribed, that granddad wrote to her back when he was at academy. He was such a gruff pain in the ass, and yet I never saw him anything except tender and loving with her, however he expressed it. It's a statement about him, on some level, but it was a statement about her as well.

My last grandparent is dead; and my family is a small, colder place for it.