With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
September 27, 2006 - 10:15 a.m.
Yesterday we made the preparations of my mother’s memorial service. We went to the funeral homes and signed the papers and contracts. There is extra paperwork because of the cremation. Because it is so final and would stifle any investigation the government insists on it. I learned a new word. What is left over after the cremations is called the cremains. Sounds like portmanteau word to me. This is my family so we ended up getting into a weird conversation with the mortuary worker. He ended up telling a story that in an old job they’d rent a boat to scatter the ashes of people at sea. That is what they do if the family doesn’t come and pick them up. After they dumped the ashes they figured that they had the boat rented for the day anyway so they went fishing. That is exactly the kind of thing I’d do.
After the paperwork we had the formal identification of my mother’s body. We went into one of the chapels where she was laid out. That really wasn’t that hard for me since as I’ve said before, the body is not the person. The body is what is left over after the person is gone.
We then went to the nursing home to pick up my mother’s belongings. We donated her clothes and glasses and just took home a few things. Sue and Mike and never been there before so I showed them around. I made my goodbyes to the cockatoos in the lobby.
Then we went shopping. Sue & Mike went to Costco and I went to the supermarket. Alison arrived right before I left. She was tired from her drive down and I went alone.
Alison wrote her eulogy on my computer then I wrote mine. Sue wrote hers on Mike’s laptop.
Max’s plane came in a little before 10 and Alison went to pick him up. We hung around and talked till about 12:30.
I got a wonderful call from Melissa. After talking for a bit we decided that I’d come up and visit her. We of course planned it around the concert schedule and decided I’d come up to see Crooked Still in November. I really needed that conversation.
We also talked about a more relevant topic, what happens to a person after you die. I think about that a lot for a person that believes that you just cease to exist. I wrote about that quite a bit after my father died. I just did a search and I see that I actually wrote two entries titled Thanatology; the first and the second. Thanatology is the study of death.
My plans are to resume my life on Friday. I’ll teach then. I’ll receive visitors on Friday night then Sue and Mike are going home and I’m going to see Christine Lavin on Saturday night. I got the confirmation of my reservation the day my mother died. I decided that I might as well go. Life goes on.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile September 27, 2006
