attack_macaque

Well, I got back from the memorial service last night and find myself still in a haze over the whole thing. No clarity yet as to what actually happened at my cousin's house, though according to her husband there is some evidence that a burner in the stove in their kitchen may have been involved. One of my cousin's brothers is in prison at the moment, where he has been for most of his adult life, and has had, you might say, a strained relationship with his sister while she was alive. (He once threatened to kill her after he got out of jail. ) While he couldn't have been directly involved with the fire, there is some rumbling among the family that he could have gotten someone on the outside to go after her. Entirely speculative at this point, but it definitely sounds like something that the fucker would have done. My cousin and her husband also supposedly have had run-ins with their neighbors - and I'm using the word "neighbors" in the loosest sense imaginable, since they lived on a couple of hundred acres of land and their house was pretty isolated - but again, nothing more than speculation at this point.

The memorial service itself was pretty cool, considering how sad we all were/are. Her remains haven't all been recovered yet, and haven't been positively ID'ed with a DNA match, so there was no casket at the ceremony. The service was pretty non-traditional, just like my cousin, and was a perfect tribute to her. It began and ended with a prayer, and there were a few songs, but the bulk of the service consisted of people standing up and telling their personal recollections of my cousin and what she meant to them. Very sad at points, but there were also some humorous stories and laughter. The closing prayer was given by another of my cousin's brothers, who is an ordained preacher. And on a tangent, I've always thought it ironic that my cousin's branch of the family produced both its most pious member and its black sheep. And when you're talking about a black sheep for this family, you're talking a pretty damn black sheep indeed.

There was lots of food both before and after the service, and the reception afterward also featured a healthy amount of alcohol, which, given my family and our general state of mind at the time, might not have been the greatest idea at the time but nonetheless turned out okay. (Side note: Oklahoma, you can take your watered-down 3.2% beer and shove it straight up your tight fundamentalist asses. I drank six of those fuckers before I even managed to get the first hint of a buzz going.) What didn't go so well was the trip home. My uncle, who gave me a ride up to Oklahoma, decided to partake in some unnamed substance on the way home, or as he called it, "hit the pipe." I have no idea what was actually in the pipe, but I (ahem) know what weed smells like, and that's not what it was. More's the pity, because I would have gladly partook a bit myself. Anyway, my uncle has a history of drug problems, and I thought he had cleaned himself up, especially since he now has a couple of young sons depending on him, and three granddaughters from his older children. He swore that it was a one-time thing because he was distraught over my cousin's death (he was really close to her), and I hope he was right. So more shit for me to worry about. All in all, though, with the exception of that and the surreal experience of having to talk to one of my weirder relatives, who (among other really annoying, bizarre things) had a slew of totally inappropriate questions about what my mother went through with her cancer during the last months of her life , it was a pretty positive day, or at least as much as it could have been considering the circumstances. The best (and most heart-wrenching) part for me was seeing my cousin's husband, a really cool guy who taught me how to play chess when I was younger, for the first time in about 20 years, and seeing my cousin's son, who is a few years younger than me and who I was really close to when we were grade-schoolers.

Seeing all the people who showed up at the ceremony gave me a pretty profound understanding of the kind of person she was. It was literally standing-room only in the church - there were so many people there that we couldn't fit everyone in the building. And those who couldn't attend (and even most who did) ordered flowers. One of the people there said that thye literally had to go over to the next county to order flowers because all the flowers in the county we were in had been bought up. My cousin was involved in the diving industry, and there were a lot of people there who were business acquaintances of hers. One of them said that when they announced her death on an industry web site, it attracted more traffic than it ever had before. Wow. I only hope I live long and well enough to affect that many people in such a positive way. I know she affected my life in a positive way: she was very supportive during the years when my mom was having her troubles, and after she passed away, she personally went and paid for the cemetary plot where we plan to bury my mom's ashes later this year. She was one of the few sane, relatively well-adjusted people in my family, and one of the threads holding our family together. She will be sorely missed by all of us.

I'll probably be posting sporadically for the next few days. I'm really sad right now, and I think I need a little time to make sense of this whole personal tragedy and how it fits into my worldview. So if I haven't personally responded to something you've posted in my journal, it's not because I haven't read it and shouldn't be taken as a sign that I don't appreciate it. I'm really thankful for the handful of people who have visited my journal and your words of support. Much love to you all.