Week 700AZ - Father burries grand father; Son burries father

The story goes a woman asked a Buddhist priest for a blessing, and he said “father buries grandfather, son buries father”. She was angry at first, but then realized anything else would be much much worse. This week we watched Slava Bury Aaron. Painful for the loss, but Aaron was lucky to die peacefully at the age of 80 having had a joyous life and getting to have grandchildren.

This post is long and rambly, so I’ll share some nice pictures first. Kids are great, I love walking them to school.

Tori is great too, she’s been grinding through the bathroom remodel, and we have lots of hots

I’ve only been to 3 funerals in my life. This was the first one I’ve been to where I’ve had children, and am aware of my own mortality.

It started as a wet and stormy day. Zach and I sat at the chapel waiting for the service to start. In the silence, I reflected. I leaned over to Zach and said with luck you’ll get to bury me too. With more luck not soon, but this is the best way. He agreed, still too young to really appreciate death and mortality.

The service was mostly in Russian. Depending on the speaker, I could make out 10 to 50% of what they were saying. They talked about how Aaron was always a joyous person. He’d always go to the thrift store to get fabric then make shopping bags and aprons to hand out to everyone. He’d also cook us food, every time my mom came to visit Aaron he’d always have food that he’d bring us. At the brunch after the funeral, I remarked I think I must still have some of his shopping bags. Everyone nodded in agreement, they mentioned they had them too, and aprons as well.

There was a luncheon after the service, on the way to the service, Zach and I debated if we should go. The funeral is to show support, but is the luncheon? Is the luncheon to show support, or a compensation for coming to the funeral. Zach’s a fan of food so we decided we’d go.

I hadn’t thought enough about it because 99% of the funeral attendees were Russian speakers who came to the states late in life and spoke very little English. Amazingly, we were the second people to the restaurant, the first was a Russian interpreter from the hospital who explained she rarely goes to funerals, just the ones where the person was truly special. Aaron was special. Sitting with a Russian interpreter was a blessing for Zach so he could understand what was going on, and a blessing for me as she spoke slowly and clearly letting me understand her Russian, and causing the other speakers to copy her clarity and pace. My Russian understanding went up to 70%, which of course makes me very happy.

The food at the luncheon was amazing. So many tasty things. Zach commented the best food he’d ever eaten. He contrasted that to a fancy party we went to. We discussed how that food was fancy, with napkins folded into cranes and such. Fancy and made with love are different. This food was made with love and awesome.

On the way home, we talked about how good the potato salad was. Probably 20 minutes talking about the potato salad. Afterwards I mentioned the funeral to my bestie, and he said oh, I bet the potato salad was amazing. It was!

While we were at the luncheon, someone said you know it’s very important to do nice things for others, otherwise there’s nothing to say at your eulogy. That made me reflect on my own eulogy and doing magic. But one doesn’t do magic at a funeral.

I learned to Zach, you’re lucky I already wrote my eulogy, you can start with that, and use chatgpt to snazzy it up.

As we finished eating the amazing luncheon, the mood in the room had really turned from sadness to happiness. Slava was happy to be surrounded by his friends and family supporting him. Slava saw me with some cards and asked, what are you gonna try to get a poker game? No I said, it’s magic, and I did some magic tricks in some pigeon Russian. Pretty enjoyable to get my magic back.