funeral etc

[cellio]

Several friends were able to come in from out of town for Johan's funeral. One stayed at our house Thursday night and was waiting when I got home from work. We went off to the visitation, which was scheduled for two hours in the evening, and ended up staying the entire two hours in large part so the various out-of-town guests (from different other-towns) could connect with each other.

Arianna (and I suspect Leifr and Hraefn, who have been her major helpers through this) put together some really nice photo displays of Johan in his various domains. So there was the SCA collection, the engineer collection, the school collection, the family collection, and maybe one other (misc?). The posterboards had photos, with captions, and also quotes and small snippets about those parts of his life. Nicely done.

There was an open casket at the visitation, which I wanted to stay away from but his sister was standing next to it for most of the night. Comforting the mourners (or, well, trying to) takes precedence. Seeing him lying there was weird; he was always so animated in life that this just seemed unnatural. I don't know, of course, but I stronly suspect that even when he slept he was somewhat animated.

Johan's father looks almost exactly like Johan plus 30 years. Picking him out of the crowd was not a problem.

There were lots of people there, so I got only a small amount of time with each relative, including Arianna. I guess that's normal, but it reinforces a difference I see between conventional American customs and shiva. With a traditional shiva, you can go to the house (not a funeral parlor) formally half a dozen times, or a dozen times if you do both morning and evening services. We will all be there for Arianna, of course, but having formal times set aside for comforting and aiding, as opposed to just working it into ordinary interactions, seems useful.

The funeral was Friday afternoon. I had wondered what they were going to do for that, since neither Johan nor Arianna is religious and they didn't belong to any congregation. However, the school they helped build is in the basement of a Presbyterian church, and they used that church. That makes sense. It also meant they could open the school up for visitors so we could see first-hand all the work Johan had done there. (The school cancelled classes for the afternoon so students and teachers could attend the funeral.)

The funeral was structured thus: the minister (reverend?) read a psalm (didn't recognize and have now forgotten enough that I can't identify) and then gave a brief opening prayer (God, no Jesus). Then six people -- two professional connections, two school connections, and two SCA connections -- each spoke, and then there was a closing prayer. This took about an hour, so I guess on average each speaker went for about 10 minutes. The speakers were all good choices, and it's good that Arianna was connected enough to his professional life to know whom to ask there.

There was a reception and, in theory, opportunity to greet the family members, but there were so many people there that this was hard to achieve. I never got to speak directly with Arianna there; she was always with someone, and the body language always conveyed "private conversation". Or maybe I suck at reading body language; I don't know. Still, it seems right to defer to the folks from out of town; I'll still be here next week.

I particularly noticed, at the funeral, the strong effect of the music. Before the service started there was organ music -- I haven't a clue what, but it solidly clicked as "funeral music" and I was weepy. The affective effect there was very strong. I found myself thinking "geez, if I'm this bad now, I didn't bring enough tissues to get through the service". But as soon as the organ stopped and the service started, I was fine. No tears -- sadness, sure, but not tears. And they closed with happy organ music ("Ode to Joy").

I know the power of music, and of the strong associations between some styles or melodies and some emotions. This is one of the points of nusach, the different types of liturgical music, after all. Yom Kippur sounds different from Chanukah even if you don't recognize a single word. So of course funerals will also sound different from other occasions. At some level I knew this but the strength of it still managed to surprise me.

I couldn't help it; while I was of course there as a mourner, I'm an anthropologist at heart. :-) I noticed one of the eulogies that seemed particularly effective; the speaker (one of the teachers in their school) built most of it around a single adjective that she used to describe Johan. That adjective was "massive" -- which was not among the first dozen possibilities that would have occurred to me. But it was versatile in all the right ways. She started by talking about his massive strength and all the ways he used it to help other people (specific stories, not generalities). She then talked about his massive sense of ethics, and his massive quest for knowledge, and his massive commitment and sense of obligation, and finally his massive love for his family. (I may have some of the specifics slightly off.) In all of these, as with the first, she used specifics. I presume that this is not someone who has a lot of experience writing eulogies, but I don't think I could have done nearly as well even though I've actually been taught a few things about the subject.

The officiant did not himself give a eulogy. It probably would have been redundant anyway; he couldn't have known Johan as well as the people who did speak. Everyone seemed to be working from written copies (or at least really good sets of notes), which, I was taught, is extremely important. There didn't seem to be an opportunity for vetting them in any way, and there was repetition therefore, but it wasn't a problem.

A local SCA couple had announced a gathering at their place in the evening, to be spent playing games and eating and chatting. (This is what Johan would have wanted if he were there.) I had heard that "a few" people were going to Arianna's first; I had the strong impression that this was by invitation and we weren't invited, so we didn't go. Later I learned that probably half the people who eventually showed up at the other gathering had been there first; I don't know if I got a bad signal or if people swarmed the house.

The gathering was nice and there were a lot of Johan stories. It started out small -- maybe I could have gone to Shabbat services after all -- but grew later. There was leftover food from the reception (are receptions after funerals normal?), because SCA cooks did the reception and, well, most SCA cooks would be horrified by the idea of someone not getting enough to eat. :-)

Today ian_gunn and eclectic_1 came for lunch with their two daughters. It was nice to have some time to catch up with them; we pretty much never get up to New Hampshire and with small children they don't always get to Pennsic. It's unfortunate that a sad occasion brought us together, but at least we did manage to get together.

The burial is tomorrow in Johan's home town, so the family went there today. Ian and Eclectic One are staying at the house through the weekend, which works out well for everyone -- they get a place to stay and the house isn't looter-bait. (I'm horrified by the apparent trend of people scanning obituaries and robbing houses during funerals.)

Comments

Johan's funeral music

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, I asked the organist to play baroque and/or classical music for the prelude without specifying pieces, and he told me he was going to play "upbeat" music. I was busy at the time trying to hunt down the first speaker, so I couldn't pay much attention to what he was playing, but I don't recall thinking it was terribly depressing. The postlude, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," was played at my specific request because it was one of Johan's favorites and our 9-year-old son had learned to play a simplified version of it on the piano this summer. This proved to be a good choice for the son - he smiled when it was played and told me he thought it was "appropriate."

Arianna

Re: Johan's funeral music

[cellio]

Hmm. Perhaps the music somehow twigged an association I didn't know I had, or something? I don't have specific musical memories of the funerals of other people I was close to, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Or it could be that most of his musical choices weren't particularly depressing but an early one was?

I'm glad "Ode to Joy" worked for your son. I assumed you'd requested the piece but didn't know its significance.

Re: Johan's funeral music

[eclectic-1.livejournal.com]

"Ode to Joy" felt right for Johan too. But I had the opposite reaction, it made me cry, a lot. It did feel right, though.

I particularly will remember Leifr's comment on Johan debating what is the afterlife, and being able to debate this from experience, as he would prefer to do with other debates.

And other comments reminds me of this joke (forgive me if it offends): Here.