Monday, October 20, 2008

Death, Drunks, Ghosts and Scarlett

I just got off the phone with my friend Gail and she was wondering why no blogging lately? I also had some emails asking the same thing. Well truth be told, once I was able to start driving again, I had to catch up on 2 weeks worth of stuff not done and still get all the stuff that currently needed doing done. The juices are running again and I shall now continue to spew forth.

So where was I? Oh yeah. Jorge passed on a few of days after the last post. We had a proper burial, giving him a primo spot in the garden and our cute cement raccoon is now his headstone. The choice for headstone was obvious, as living out in the country, one never knows when some carnivorous creature will smell out his last resting place and decide that rotting hamster makes a nice snack. 

Of course, we had to get an immediate replacement for Jorge so as to assuage the sadness and remorse of my younger son. Thus, we now have Thistle, another cute critter who runs on that stupid wheel all night, making me close my bedroom door to drown out the whirring and then having to put up with my dog head-butting it when he decides he wants to move from HIS room into our room for the night...or vice versa. 

Whatever happened to a period of mourning? Is it so easy to just make yourself feel better by replacing one loved one with another? I guess in the case of dead hamsters the answer is a resounding YES. I know it worked in the case of some divorced friends I know. Mind you I was just barely separated from my first husband before I met my current husband. But then again those exes were just emotionally dead, not physically. OK, trying to be a non-judgmental human being, I'll go with whatever floats your boat. Perhaps mourning is highly over-rated. It wasn't so long ago that women had to wear black for a year and keep there faces veiled before they could kick up their heels. I loved Scarlett O'hara in Gone With the Wind after Charles, her first husband, had died and she said the heck with the black dud's, I'm going dancing. 

I like the Irish tradition of having a wake when someone dies. I can live without the women keening part, but I do appreciate that it celebrates the life of the person, that there is a certain gaiety involved and that you can drink a lot...which probably is partly responsible for the gaiety....makes much more sense to me than all the grieving and mourning stuff. Besides I like drunks as long as they are amusing. I hereby order the few of you who actually make it to my funeral to come only after you've had a few. Trust me, you really don't need to come, 'cause I won't be sitting there with a pen and angelic paper writing down the names of those who are absent so I can come back and haunt you. Really...I won't....OK, I will, but only if you really ticked me off while I was in your face.









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