Today was the funeral (in case you haven’t been paying attention), and it went pretty well if I must say so myself. We woke up around 8:30 (well I did anyway), took a shower and got dressed in my finest clothes. After some prancing around trying to get our clothing to look its best, we head out towards moms work to pick up some sandwiches and cake.

After dropping off the food at the place we’re meeting up after the ceremony, we head for the church.. We met up with quite allot of family on the parking lot. My Uncle and Aunt, some uncles and aunts of my mom and uncle, and of course, grandpa. I went over, gave my uncle a hug, then after having a chat with one of moms uncles, went over and gave my grandfather a good hug. After some hanging around in the freezing cold, being around 0 degrees and foggy, we decided it would be time to walk inside.

We walk up the aisle, towards my grandmothers coffin, and I get to see all the bouquets from friends and family. I really felt a little lump in my throat already there, and I who was so bashful as to say no thanks to a tissue earlier in the car on our way there, thinking I would probably not get teary eyed, boy was i wrong.
So, we get to our places, my stepfather, mom, grandfather, uncle and aunt in front (in that order), and a brother of my grandma, me and my brother on the next row.

Now this is where I would like to cut in and make a little comment on how incredibly annoying the church is. Thing is, in most cases, when a person dies, of course you should mourn, but at the same time, you shouldn’t really feel horribly bad about not being sad constantly. Death is just as normal as birth, and by being pushed into mourning and depression because you should mourn, is by my views a bit too silly.
Thing is, we sat around waiting for the sermon to start for at least 10 minutes, just sitting there in the silence, waiting for something to happen. After quite some time, the organist starts playing. And even the music is somewhat depressing at times.
I sat there, waiting for the priest to appear, but oh no, there had to be at least 3 songs before he appeared.

Anyway, he held a prayer, read from various parts of the bible and held a rather moving speech about grandma, which i really felt described her in a really wonderful way. I was very touched by this and there were several times I just had to bow down, dry my nose and eyes with my wrist and try not to let it all out. I was not prepared to react like that at all, and it really surprised me. So after the priest had said his stuff, my aunt read a poem and we were called up to carry the coffin.

This part was pretty much a blur, mostly because my eyes were drenched in tears. As we carried the coffin down the aisle, I just kept staring at the floor, trying not to look anyone in the eye, but still seeing enough to be able to not stumble. We carried the coffin outside, and put it on a trolley, then waited for the rest of the people to come out of the church. It was so freezing cold as well, around 0 degrees and slight fog. We rolled the trolley down a gravel road and to the place where she was supposed to lie. Carried the coffin over to the pulley system and put it down on it.
The priest said his final speech, like “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and so forth, and they lowered the coffin down into the ditch. All the time while this was happening, I was looking at the ground, lump in throat and blurred vision.
Turns out, lots of the family on my fathers side was at the sermon as well, aunts, uncles and even my dad (whom I haven’t talked to for almost 2 years, for personal reasons..), but I was too upset to notice anything and just wanted to get away as fast as possible.

Me, my step dad and brother went straight to the place we were going to eat and greeted the guests. There was of course allot of old people, everyone saying “oh you’ve become so grown-up!” and there was the usual questions “What are you doing these days?”, “Where do you live?”, “Do you have a girlfriend?”. Great fun -_-;

So we had some food, I talked some with my granddad and uncle, but most of the time it was me and my brother just being bored and having sword fights with tiny cocktail swords. Was nice though, food was good, and so was cake.

After we were all done, and the rest of the guests had left, we went back home, got out of our good clothing and just relaxed. We talked a bit about how we thought it went and were all quite happy it was over.

So my first funeral, and I can’t really say I enjoyed it. I sure hope it’s a long time until the next one…