Aging Well

And no problem with the 6 AM beer this morning, either.  I say this again: a drunk will choose alcohol over family and work and health and life itself.  This is a fact, born out in my own experience and reinforced over many years in recovery.

I am not an overly emotional person - I am steady, controlled, reflective.  I don't react with great horror or great joy to events in my life.  I'm sure that there is some small measure of suppressed dysfunction there but I'm equally convinced that this is who I am.  I'm reasonably happy so I think that the way I react to life is OK - maybe my behavior doesn't always fall in some kind of prescribed social norm but that's OK, too.

At my mother's wake there were a lot of people there from my past.  I kind of had a good time.  It was great catching up with everyone and I wasn't lost in the throes of an existential grief over mom's death - as I've said I was in a good place with her, comfortable in my own skin about our relationship.  Not always doing what she wanted me to do but consistent in my actions.  I joked around a little.  There were 3 dear friends from high school that came to pay their respects and they sat together in the rear of the church - should I say that they were the only 3 high school friends to show up and they were all Jewish, attending a very fundamental Christian service?  Something about actions speaking louder than words in all of that.

I snuck up behind them before the casket procession began.

"I'd like to sit with you guys but I think it might be a little disrespectful," I quipped.

And then - as the casket was being rolled down the center aisle - I peeled off and commented that "You know that I've aged better than all of you."

I think mom would have approved - she loved all 3 of these dudes.

Before the casket was closed I leaned over and kissed my mom's forehead.  She was cold - which I expected - and she was very perfumey - which I did not.  It left a sweet chemical taste in my mouth that I found most unpleasant.  I did something that wasn't in my character to try to fit into a suggested norm.  It was a dopey move on my part, very uncharacteristic, and I wish I hadn't done it.  

The jokes I regret not a bit.

RIP Mama.