this is my life

"Just a fond farewell to a friend...
this is not my life"
Elliott Smith

So do I stay here working and worrying and miss the funeral of a great aunt who felt more like a grandmother, who always whistled while she did dishes, loved "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and worked to connect scattered relatives, like us, transplanted south years ago? It's a thousand miles away. I don't have time for this...For four days of driving. I've got work to do. Lots of it. Papers to write. Papers to grade.

***

That was as far as I got last week. I packed my clothes in 40 minutes and spent 20 gathering the papers and books I should have worked on. Of course I didn't get much done. OK--I admit it. I did virtually nothing. And now I'm paying for it.

But some things are more important than school, hard as that is to believe sometimes. I wouldn't have missed it. I wouldn't even skip the drive with my parents, through the upstate New York throughway in the winter, past the severely pruned vineyards and the Erie canal, and that strange hill covered with what appear to be plastic pipe periscopes.

You just don't stay in your apartment listening to music and thinking and writing. Work is not meant to justify missing life itself. Even in my current state of anxiety, I recognize the value of the time away from this bubble, in the real world... with the great aunt (now the only surviving sibling of thirteen) and cousins who made room for us during our stay and at the wake, where I saw pictures of my grandmother I've never seen before. She looked so happy on the beach.

As soon as I walked into the funeral home, I remembered the wallpaper in the hallway. My earliest memories about death are in this place. They haven't redecorated, the building is still drafty, and they still have bowls of hard candy scattered about.

"That last time I saw you..." (was probably in this room, at a funeral....)

Yeah. I'm not a kid anymore. Shocking isn't it? So you meet people who knew you 20 years ago, 10 years ago. You talk about yourself, and try to mitigate whatever your proud father is telling his family about you, and think-- I've got great parents, and so what if I want to hide behind the flower arrangements now and then. wht-- who cares if everyone thinks I'm amazing.

***

I had an extra hot latte with a double shot today, and as I tried to do some research in the cafe, "Somewhere over the rainbow" came on...a version I've heard countless times and will always associate with my great aunt. I couldn't have imagined a more cliched conclusion, but I guess I don't have to.