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Obsequy

I didn’t start writing this post with the intention of blogging my Grandmother’s funeral. I was not sitting in the funeral home, mentally spinning the proceedings into blog fodder. And I’m fully aware of how tacky it may seem to journalize a funeral alongside a movie review of The Watchmen. But… why is that? Is it for the same reason that nobody whips out their digital camera during the ceremony and takes pictures of the deceased… because to infuse the situation with new media is inappropriate? Well, it’s not like I was live-blogging, or sending out tweets via Twitter, or trying to think of a tactful Facebook status. It’s just that today, when I sat down to write, this is what came out…

We left Boston at 3:30am on Friday morning, bound for Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The mood in the car was groggy but determined to make it to the funeral starting at 9:30am. Mr. P drove while I dozed and stared out the window at the dark highway. Across the median, hundreds of semi-trailer trucks rambled towards Boston in a steady stream of glaring headlights and side markers. Daylight broke just as we approached the Tappan Zee Bridge, and though the road thickened with commuters, we never broke our 70 mph pace. We stopped for a break just after crossing the PA border and got coffee and Tastykakes from a vending machine, which we ate on a bench in our funereal attire. By 10am, we were in Lancaster, cruising around cozy streets of row homes.

We located the funeral home and arrived at the viewing. The room was crowded with family, friends, old neighbors, members of her church. There were hugs and sad smiles. The open casket beckoned at the front of the room, but the need to see Grandma one last time could not completely overcome my squeamishness about dead bodies. Finally my mother lead me over to the coffin, and I peered at Grandma. Her wrinkles were gone and her face looked serene and content. It was both reassuring and terrifying.

Some things that one does not overhear at the funeral of a 98-year old woman: “She was so young.” “She had so much life.” “It was too soon.” “What was the cause of death?”

The ceremony started with the pastor declaring that it would not be a somber service, but rather a celebration of Anna Kraft’s life. He spoke of her family, her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, and her great-great grandchild, a one-month old baby girl who I happened to be sitting behind and whose gentle cooing calmed me immensely.

My mother and uncle offered eulogies. As they spoke lovingly of their mother, it dawned on me that we were saying goodbye to the family’s matriarch. She had been a constant presence in our lives and had devoted her life to us, her family. The memories that we all had of her were of everyday happenings in the domestic sphere — a great pie, a stack of presents under the Christmas tree, a warm hug. But the sum of these trivial events, well, that’s a Grandma.

After the burial service, there was a luncheon in the reception room of a nearby hotel. The Pennsylvania Dutch menu gave me pause: It was cold cuts with kaiser rolls and horseradish, potato salad, cole slaw, and potato chips, a selection that revived memories of informal Christmas dinners at Grandma Kraft’s house. My appetite was dampened with grief, but I ate. I ate a sandwich and then two pieces of cake, because that’s what Grandma would have wanted.

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By Meredith – March 29, 2009

The Ultimate Deadline

Learning of the death of a loved one can make once-weighty matters seem suddenly frivolous. That documentation deadline I was stressing about last week? Pooh. That’s not a deadline. Death is a deadline.

Death also makes the already-frivolous seem fucking ridiculous. I took a small walk at lunch today, to clear my mind, and I passed a well-dressed young woman who squealed into her cell phone “I was like, so, like, whatever, so, like, see you!” What? How can you waste the few precious breaths given to you by your creator on jargon that’s like, so, like insipid?

But death does not spur creativity. As I prepare for a last-minute trip to PA to attend my Grandma’s funeral, my mind isn’t exactly in the mood to write in the style that I typically adopt for this website. It’s too busy pondering stuff. Death stuff. Life stuff. Stuff involving black shoes and whether they are appropriately somber. Sad stuff. And happy stuff and memories of Grandma.

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By Meredith – March 27, 2009

Mourning

Last night, a 98-year old woman passed away in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her name was Anna Kraft and she lived in Lancaster County her whole long life. She trained as a teacher and taught for one year before stopping to have children — 7 in all, 4 girls and 3 boys. Her husband was a high school vice principal and avid gardner who was active in his community, and who passed away in the 1980s. She had never learned to drive. She was beloved by her family, and enjoyed good health well into her 90s.

She was my Grandma Kraft, my maternal grandmother, my last living blood link to that generation. And she was the embodiment of grandmotherhood. She was selfless, caring, never angry, gently doting, and, in my childhood, usually baking pies.

Here are some memories of my Grandma Kraft, in rough chronological order: I remember going to her house in Lancaster, the house where my mother and her 6 siblings grew up, and playing Monopoly on the dining room table as Grandma bustled around the kitchen, perpetually in motion. I remember staying at her house once when my parents went away and taking the bus with her to shop at the Lancaster Central Market. I remember doing cartwheels for her in a park at a family reunion. I remember her lemon meringue pie and her deviled eggs. I remember her hugging people at her husband’s funeral, her eyes red and wet. I remember her every Christmas, doggedly handing out envelopes of cash to protesting children and grandchildren.

I remember visiting her when she moved into her retirement home and bringing her flowers, and her saying “Why’d you go and do that?” (this seemed to be a standard response whenever someone splurged on her). I remember sitting next to her at a party in the function room of a seafood restaurant, and her pointing past the fish and potatoes to the parsley garnish and saying “That’s the healthiest thing on this plate.” I remember talking to her soon after my wedding last year, which she was unable to attend, and her saying “You’ll have to get used to your new name now” (a seemingly simple and practical statement with layers of wisdom underneath it).

Just this morning, before I learned that my Grandma had passed, I read about the plane crash in Montana that killed seven children and their parents. I was looking at a picture of some of the kids, all smiling and cute, and the tragedy of their deaths nearly moved me to tears. They were so young, and it was so sudden.

For a 98-year woman with declining health to gently pass away should be no cause for agonized grief. But there is some grief, there are a few tears, there is regret that I was unable to visit her as much as I should have. I comfort myself by remembering that death is a part of life, and we were blessed to have her with us as long as we did.

“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels,
we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
-Anton Chekhov

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By Meredith – March 24, 2009

Movie Review: The Watchmen

The Watchmen is the best graphic novel I’ve ever read. Then again it’s the only one I’ve ever read. About 8 years ago I dated a fanboy with an array of obsessions, including comics, Star Wars, Star Trek, Simpsons, anime, indie music, horror movies, Tolkien, and anything else that has associated action figures or a trace amount of kitsch irony. Eager to indoctrinate me into the world of comics, ex-boyfriend lent me The Watchmen as an introduction to the genre. And I loved it. It was nothing like how I imagined comic books to be. It was sophisticated and eloquent, imaginative and ambitious, suspenseful and engrossing, a science fiction masterpiece. My mind was blown and I was prepared to become a comic book geek who would accompany ex-boyfriend to comic conferences and be a smokin’ hot trophy on his scrawny arm. “Give me more!” I demanded to ex-boyfriend, who fed me about 3 or 4 other graphic novels that were totally not on the same level as The Watchmen. I lost interest in comics and eventually in ex-boyfriend, and The Watchmen sticks in my mind as the only positive impact ex-boyfriend made on my life.

The Watchmen seemed like an unfilmable novel, like Ender’s Game or Finnegan’s Wake. But despite the protests of The Watchmen‘s creator and the fears of many fans, Hollywood was determined to make it into a blockbuster. And The Watchmen is not a bad movie at all, really. The Watchmen sags in some places and nowhere near approaches the genius of the graphic novel, but it’s visual appeal is fully capable of entrancing the viewer for the full 2 hours and 40 minutes.

When any book is made into a movie, fans of the book inevitably moan about the details that are lost — the writer’s style, voice, use of language, pacing, sometimes entire characters and scenes. One would think that a graphic novel would suffer minimal distortion, especially when it adheres to the story line as strictly as The Watchmen does. But the minute details that the graphic novel choose to present in each frame — facial expressions, body positions, blood splatters — are lost when the pictures begin to move. In fact, the most striking scene of the movie is the opening credits, a sequence of frozen images set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing.”

People who never read The Watchmen will be able to keep up if they pay strict attention and manage to filter out all the little gorgeous details — what may have been one fleeting frame in the graphic novel becomes a distracting flashback in the movie. Still, I can’t imagine liking The Watchmen half as much as I did if I never read the graphic novel, because most of the fun was seeing the characters — Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian — come alive on the big screen. Overall, a flawed achievement.

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By Meredith – March 23, 2009

XC Skiing and the Pogues

Yesterday was a busy day. In the morning we went XC skiing, and in the evening we went to the Pogues show. These 2 activities are discordant, almost contradictory, and I cannot muster one single unifying theme except the incongruousness.

XC Skiing

New Hampshire’s thick snow cover is steadily disintegrating as spring presses its warm, wet nose against the Northeast, so we headed to Waterville Valley to enjoy one last hurrah on our XC skis. We were eager to test the new ski gear that we acquired recently at clearance sales before we have to pack it all away in storage for the next 8 months.

My new XC skis are skating skis. Skating is a XC technique that resembles ice skating on the snow.  Skating requires exceptional balance, stamina, and a willingness to go fast.

Here it is: the last XC ski picture for 8 months, I promise (barring any April snowstorms)…

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Pogues

I fell in love with the Pogues in college. The Pogues were one of the few musical groups that my ‘Irish-American pride’ friends and I agreed on. They didn’t understand why punks liked this band featuring an accordion, tin whistle, and banjo, while I didn’t understand how anyone but a punk could like a band featuring Shane MacGowan.

So I wasn’t surprised that the crowd at the Pogues show was an eclectic mix of ratty punks and spiffy celtic folk music fans. Since I’m too far removed from my punk days to dredge up any credible punk clothing, I dressed more like the latter, wearing a collared white shirt under a black jumper and knee-high black boots. We arrived early at the House of Blues in Boston, still breathless from skiing, because I was determined to get a good place in front the stage. And we did — slightly right of center, 3-people deep behind the security barrier. We were close enough to be able to inhale Shane MacGowan’s secondhand smoke and (theoretically) count his teeth as he took swigs from a whiskey bottle.

The Pogues got on stage shortly after 9pm and started off with “Streams of Whiskey.” I was one of the crazy people who yelled every lyric, danced furiously, and cheered every time they announced the next song because they played all my favorites — “White City,” “Thousands are Sailing,” “Turkish Song of the Damned, “Dirty Old Town.” Halfway through “The Body of an American,” a guy interrupted my singalong cries of “I’m a freeborn man in the USA!” to attempt to hit on me — as my husband stood right next time me, completely unaware and engrossed in the show. He purported to be Irish and called himself a “son of Ireland.” I ignored him. Later, during “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” a mosh pit started next to me, and I was so infused with energy that I was briefly absorbed into it, joyful and free, holding my own against these raucous young men. The show ended after 11pm, just as my legs muscles were on the verge of turning to jelly.

Here are some pictures from Mr. P’s cell phone, including Shane with his whiskey bottle.

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By Meredith – March 22, 2009

Helmets

In addition to causing me to crave simple carbohydrates and say inappropriate things (see yesterday), stress also turns me into a stark-raving worrier.

Natasha Richardson’s tragic ski-induced brain injury and subsequent death severely rattled me. I, too, took a few spills on the bunny hill while learning how to ski just 2 short weeks ago. What is the statute of limitations on brain trauma? Could a bruise be lurking under my skull, silently hemorrhaging, slowly vegetating?

“We’re wearing helmets for now on,” I told Mr. P.

“For skiing?” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“No, for everything. Driving, walking, showering, sex, sleeping. All the time. We’re never safe.”

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By Meredith – March 19, 2009

Fruity Pebbles

The software development process — that is, the process by which software is developed — is both cyclical and iterative. I won’t bore into your brain with the nitty gritty, but a byproduct of the fluidity is that engineers are changing the software right up until the release. So, as a technical writer, I spend the last 2 weeks before a release in total documentation frenzy: Changing old content, writing new content, keeping track of unresolved issues, putting my face in my hands and crying, and secretly praying for a show-stopping bug that will push the release date back a few weeks.

Yes, it’s crunch time at work.

When I stress out, I tend to crave very particular foods. Today’s hankering was for Fruity Pebbles cereal. Screw you, oatmeal! I want my carbohydrates to be as simple as I wish life were!

Since confinement to the office left me unable to avail myself of Fruity Pebbles, I instead consumed massive quantities of Zen tea from Tazo (“a harmonious blend with lemongrass and spearmint”). When I wasn’t hunkered over my laptop or skyping co-workers for information, I was getting Zen tea in the kitchenette and getting rid of Zen tea in the bathroom.

Zen tea sounds as if it’s calming, soothing, a real aura stabilizer, but I have my doubts. Today’s low point: During a meeting, a co-worker evoked the maxim “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I piped up: “Try using a chock collar, or kicking it.” Woah! Where did that indirect condonation of animal abuse come from? Was it the lemongrass?

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By Meredith – March 18, 2009

Greenheart

*Somehow* we ended up with Boston Symphony tickets on St. Patrick’s Day.

“This is just about the least Irish thing we could be doing,” I said to Mr. P as we mingled in Symphony Hall with our pre-show glasses of wine (beer is not served). “It’s about as Irish as growing bananas.”

We were surrounded by the usual seething crowd of moneyed gray-hairs as they relentlessly hobnobbed in the minutes before the start of the concert. “We’re spending St. Patrick’s Day with people who probably made their fortunes while oppressing Irish. We’re listening to Mozart and Brahms. And I’ve only seen one green tie out of all the 100s of ties here! And look at that guy! He’s wearing an orange tie! In Boston, that’s a political statement!” I said, pointing with my eyes at a particularly dour gent wearing a gray suit with an orange necktie. “I’m going to punch him.”

“Pinch him?” asked Mr. P, who had just this morning learned that non-adherents to the St. Patrick’s day dress code get pinched.

“No, punch! With my big fat Irish fist!” That’s an exaggeration. My fist is neither fat nor Irish. In fact, as far as I can tell from my known lineage, I’m more Scottish and German than Irish. But being trapped at the symphony with my fellow WASPs really riled whatever inner Irishness I do have. I am, after all, Green at heart.

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By Meredith – March 17, 2009

The Lawyers Fought the Law, and the Lawyers Won

Way back in late 2007, I thrilled over the images and stories coming out of Pakistan, where the nation’s lawyers were engaged in violent protests over then-Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf’s decision to dismiss the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Under Chaudry’s rule, the court had made rulings against governmental corruption and human rights abuses, and Musharraf feared that Chaudry would interfer with his plans to run for another term in office so he placed Chaudry under house arrest. Thousands of black-suited Pakistani lawyers boycotted the courts and took to the streets in protest of Musharraf’s illegal action. They threw eggs and stones, they were beaten and jailed, but they were resolute.

I love these bad-ass Pakistani lawyers. The incongruity of seeing men in 3-piece suits with ties, clashing against riot police, was such a stirring image. Normally, protesters in foreign countries are wearing the garb of foreigners. But not only were the Pakistani lawyers wearing Westernized clothing, they were wearing the most improbable attire in order to violently disobey against the arm of rule within their country: A business suit!

pakistan-lawyer

Today the Pakistani government, under new President Zardari (widower of the assassinated political hero Benazir Bhutto), has announced that Chaudhry will be reinstated as Chief Justice. Said a leader of the protesting lawyers, “No country can progress without an independent judiciary and the government — by restoring the chief justice and other judges — has also realized it, and we think it is a big success.”

Such a bad-ass!

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By Meredith – March 16, 2009

The Running of the Green

Today Mr. P and I ran the Ras na hErieann 5K running race in Somerville. The race’s website claims that it is “the most genuine Irish race this side of the Atlantic… a celebration of traditions dating back centuries.” Yes, because when I think of Ireland, I think of 5000 ruddy-haired people wearing green-feather boas, hats shaped like beer mugs, and headbands with shamrock boppers as they parade around town via a quick gait of sustained strides, sweating and grunting as the onlookers chant “Beer! Beer! Beer!” to motivate them to the finish line. Ah, tradition.

I finished the 5K in just under 30 minutes, not a bad time considering the crowd congestion as well as a digestive issue with my morning oatmeal. Immediately after finishing the race, I joined a stampede of runners for the free post-race hydration (sadly, only water and a drink called owater which contains all these electrolytes, antioxidants, and other ingredients that won’t get me shit-faced).

Honestly, the coolest race t-shirts ever: Black with a green and orange celtic knot across the front. I think 50% of the runners were only there for the t-shirts. The other 50% were excited by the prospect of the post-race craic, which was a pub crawl through Somerville that probably got pretty wild pretty fast considering everyone’s stomach was empty and it is the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day. Copious drinking is obligatory, because otherwise, one’s pride in their ethnic heritage may be questionable.

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By Meredith – March 15, 2009