death

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ROSEMARY
Old Skool Pax
Posts: 349
Joined: Fri Dec 14, 2001 9:01 am
Location: seattle

death

Post by ROSEMARY »

last year this same day, i found my grandmother dead. she had hemorraghed and the sheets were bloody around her delicate wrists. i had slept with her every night except this one because i needed to rest as the hospital was so loud and she had given me her pneumonia.
that same day i picked her coffin out and called family and friends. she had told me what kind funeral she wanted, a simple one with me singing.
she also told me that her hair is parted on on the left side. why did she tell me this?
the day of the funeral kibby, the mortician insisted it be an open coffin which i think is terribly digusting. i had already had to stay in the hospital with a rigor mortis grandma till the coroner came in. i simply took a comb and changed her do to the right side. then came time to bury the old girl.
it is not the first time i have found someone dead so i wonder are some people around to usher to the next rite of passage? or just strange timing.
bicycleprince
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Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2002 9:01 am
Location: Mid MO

death

Post by bicycleprince »

I loved my great-grandmother very much. And based on her journal entries, of all my brothers and cousins she especially liked me. But it was my next brother (I have 4) that was present, when she passed. My grandmother was there, too. She says it was very peaceful. It happened just after they prayed their traditional morning rosary. My brother was five and sick from kindergarten; he did not know what happened. He told me that day that Nanny made a big puff after they prayed, and then grandma prayed some more and then cried and then the ambulance men came and took Nanny away. She was sleeping with a smile.

My mom and her sisters like to have their pictures taken in front of the open coffins of dead relatives. Those pictures are frightening and, yes, terribly disgusting. I am not in any of them, but I would like to have my picture taken with a dead person.
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martino
Bigus Dickus
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Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2002 9:01 am
Location: krautland

death

Post by martino »

not sure i understand your question rosie, sorry i am a little slow sometimes.

but here is my story. my papa died on the hottest day of the year in july five years ago. he had been playing four sets of tennis, went home to mow his lawn, and then keeled over and died in his beloved garden. i came and laid him up on the living room couch. my mom was terrified of the idea of him being taken away so we held a proper catholic wake for the next four days, which is the legal maximum over here.

i slept on the floor next to the couch and felt the horror of death in my sleep. over the following days relatives and neighbors came over to say good bye to the body which we kept under a cotton sheet but lifted for whoever wanted to take a closer look or give a last hug. the day after my papa died my phony brother came with his wife and spouted some new age b.s. about how beautiful dad looked and i said, dammit, he looks fucking ugly, he's dead isn't he?

over the following weeks and months my papa spoke to me in my sleep, gave me all kinds of advice and comforted me. sometimes the dialogue was ridiculous, for example when he used one of his favorite phrases: "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" -- to which i was able to give the ultimate reply: "if you're so smart, why are you dead?" i may be disrespectful and weird but i am glad i had those four days in july to say goodbye to my papa who was still wearing his sweaty tennis clothes.

by the way, we didn't have him prettied up for display in an open cask for the funeral -- that would have been pointless, of course.
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