dwindling

i went to yet another funeral yesterday. i’ve started attending these things all too frequently. one again, i find myself at the same old cemetary. just a year ago, there was only one person i knew in this cemetary, but by yesterday, that number had risento 5 people. the person who died was my grandmother’s brother’s wife. my grandmother’s brother had died only a week after my grandma, and everyone suspected that it was really just a question of time until his wife would pass away as well.

i really didnt know her all that well, so when i went to the funeral, i wasn’t sure how affected i would be by it. of course, it’s sad when anyone dies, and because of that i was sad, but it’s not like i would be personally affected by her death. regardless of that, the funeral was really sad nonetheless. seeing all the people that were close to her bawling and sobbing was very very difficult… but at the same time… i dunno, in a way it’s all a really beautiful thing depending on how you look at it. i think people are lucky that we care enough about each other to feel such intense and strong emotions when someone passes away. people love each other and slowly form strong unbreakable bonds together and when those bonds are severed, severed by death, the only thing that can break the unbreakable, it is only right that our whole world should come crashing down on us. i think life would be horrible and ugly if we could just shrug off the death of a loved one and not care. it’s only when someone’s absence can really hurt you, that they mean the most.

one thing i really disliked about this funeral, is that they chose to fill the grave at the ceremony. this means they brought in a bulldozer that lowered a huge cement slab into the grave and then filled it w/ dirt. for some reason, it all just seemed so impersonal an too high-tech for me. a bunch of guys in hardhats and a loud-ass bulldozer… my cousin said it was like we were on a construction site instead of a funeral.

so the funeral was pretty rough, and then we went back to the daughter’s house so everyone could eat. a lot of people made some good toasts. russians are all about toasting and giving speeches. it’s completely engrained in their culture. the saddest toast was one given by my grandma’s sister. she’s the last remaining sibling in the family and all of these recent deaths had really shaken her up, and yet she still got up and made a speech.

*sigh* what a day….