First off, much love and thanks to everyone for your kind words. I'm still in shock to a certain extent, though now it's more of a dull shock that leaves me feeling like I'm walking through a gray tunnel with no light at the end. I've tried to put on a good face for the most part, mainly because I don't feel like having to listen to the nimrods I work with drone on with a bunch of well-intentioned but no less grating religious blather about how their god "called" my cousin "home," or some such nonsense. I'm thinking that if there's a god up there somewhere, he could have chosen a vastly less painful way to call my cousin home than to burn her to death. 
When I lost my mother to cancer a few years ago I had to hear the religious stuff on an almost daily basis for weeks from my co-workers, and it was all I could do some days to keep from screaming at or strangling people.
They are having a memorial service for my cousin tomorrow in Oklahoma, which I will be leaving to go to at about 7:30 in the morning. It's not a full-fledged funeral, because they are still investigating the cause of the fire and trying to determine if my cousin was murdered. My mother's side of the family will no doubt be gathering to pay their respects, which inevitably means that something bad will happen because someone always manages to say or do something immensely stupid whenever any group of 4 or more of my mom's relatives is in the same place at the same time. Case in point: the weekend before my mom died, we had an impromptu family reunion at her hospice center so she could see her kin for one last time, and, I kid you not, one of her uncles had the gall to make a crack about her history of drug abuse and insinuated that she deserved what she was going through. Needless to say, I wasn't within earshot at the time, because if I had been, I would have been blood-mopping the floor with that 80-year-old cocksucker's face, brittle bones notwithstanding. As it was, we ended up having a nasty little scene over the whole thing between a few of my kin, which didn't immediately make sense to me because nobody wanted to tell me what had provoked it. Thankfully it took place outside, instead of inside the hospice. So yeah, I'm expecting something stupid to happen tomorrow. I'd be incredibly happy to turn out wrong on this one, but it's been happening for centuries now. Seriously, the list of countries and states that my mom's ancestors were run out of before they ended up in Texas, whether for horse theivery or bootlegging or just general mayhem, is staggering.
Tomorrow's going to be a rough day.
Knowing what my cousin must have gone through in the last moments of her life makes it even worse. I'm so sick of all the pain and suffering and anxiety in the world, especially when it doesn't have to happen. And especially when it happens to people I care about.
When I lost my mother to cancer a few years ago I had to hear the religious stuff on an almost daily basis for weeks from my co-workers, and it was all I could do some days to keep from screaming at or strangling people.
They are having a memorial service for my cousin tomorrow in Oklahoma, which I will be leaving to go to at about 7:30 in the morning. It's not a full-fledged funeral, because they are still investigating the cause of the fire and trying to determine if my cousin was murdered. My mother's side of the family will no doubt be gathering to pay their respects, which inevitably means that something bad will happen because someone always manages to say or do something immensely stupid whenever any group of 4 or more of my mom's relatives is in the same place at the same time. Case in point: the weekend before my mom died, we had an impromptu family reunion at her hospice center so she could see her kin for one last time, and, I kid you not, one of her uncles had the gall to make a crack about her history of drug abuse and insinuated that she deserved what she was going through. Needless to say, I wasn't within earshot at the time, because if I had been, I would have been blood-mopping the floor with that 80-year-old cocksucker's face, brittle bones notwithstanding. As it was, we ended up having a nasty little scene over the whole thing between a few of my kin, which didn't immediately make sense to me because nobody wanted to tell me what had provoked it. Thankfully it took place outside, instead of inside the hospice. So yeah, I'm expecting something stupid to happen tomorrow. I'd be incredibly happy to turn out wrong on this one, but it's been happening for centuries now. Seriously, the list of countries and states that my mom's ancestors were run out of before they ended up in Texas, whether for horse theivery or bootlegging or just general mayhem, is staggering.
Tomorrow's going to be a rough day.
Knowing what my cousin must have gone through in the last moments of her life makes it even worse. I'm so sick of all the pain and suffering and anxiety in the world, especially when it doesn't have to happen. And especially when it happens to people I care about.VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
heres a good funeral tip: when some good-intentioned num-nuts says something stupid....smile. the more ignorant the bigger the smile. then when you turn around, whisper "fuck-face..." under your breath. it sounds childish but it works.
keep the faith.