Eulogy

I usually don’t talk about personal matters on my blog, primarily because they’re not entertaining. It takes a lot of work keeping my family life and my internet life in two separate little boxes, but I kind of have to do that. I don’t know which would be worse; boring you lot with photos of people you don’t care about and will never meet, or be forced by a distant cousin to answer uncomfortable questions about what pedobear is and why it’s funny.

This means I pretty much have to ignore Facebook forever. Oddly enough, I’m fine with that.

I do want to talk a little about my aunt, though. This will by my way of putting her behind me. The funeral yesterday was about what you’d expect. Everyone talked a great deal about how caring, loving and generous she was, not the least of which was the priest who had never actually met her.

We’re obligated to say those things at memorial services. I’ve been to services before where people said those things, and I have disagreed. If people say those things about me when I kick off, you can be sure they’re just trying to avoid speaking ill of the dead.

With my aunt, though, you could say all those wonderful things and really mean them. She earned those descriptors in a way very few people do.

My aunt helped to raise me, and I remember even as a boy noting stark contrasts between her parenting style and that of my own parents. For example, my mother never chased me around the house with a wooden spoon, even though lord knows I deserved it from time to time. In all my life I never knew her door to be closed to anyone, and she never had trouble finding space for another chair at her table.

I will miss her, and her meatballs, terribly.