At least we have Conan...

For the life of me, I can't recall a time that my wife and I sat and listened to The Beatles. Neither of us owns a Beatles cd, and we never hear them on the radio. I think we looked at one or two Wings songs for our wedding, but that's about it.

So I think you can see why our song list for our son's memorial was a little surprising:

Let it be - The Beatles
Sing For You - Tracy Chapman
When You Come Back Down - Nickel Creek
Imagine - John Lennon
In Loving Memory - Alter Bridge
You're Missing - Bruce Springsteen
Blackbird - The Beatles
Your Song - Elton John
One More Day - Diamond Rio
In My Life - The Beatles
Lullabye - Billy Joel
Forever Young - Bob Dylan
Godspeed - Dixie Chicks
Hey Jude - The Beatles


The gentlemen from the mortuary were very kind and had everything set up quite beautifully when we arrived. Joel was cremated and his urn, a simple bronze cube with his name and birth-date engraved, rested in the lap of the large blue puppy my wife fell in love with at the floral shop. No speaker; just a gathering for family and friends.
It was nice.

I still don't know what to think of Saturday.

Our son, 17 month old Jules, had a great time; running and playing with family. Seeing him have a blast usually means I'm having a blast, so perhaps you can see where my mind is confused.

Unfortunately, some of my family got caught up in the kids having a good time, especially at my In-Laws house afterwards, and honestly acted like the whole occasion was just some family reunion (something I had promised to my wife that my family didn't do at funerals). Admittedly, in my stupor I even got caught up in a bit of picture taking, at least of my son, and I accepted the (very) late Christmas gifts that some of my family brought Jules. Again, I just didn't think about it at the time; I just accepted them and moved on, not sure what to think. Now I know they were just trying to be cheerful/helpful, and my uncle even said to me, "we thought these might be helpful for Jules with everything else being kind of crazy right now." ( I used quotes, but I'm sure those aren't the exact words, but whose blog is this?)

The toys are nice...but maybe an ill-timed delivery?? and I hope I never see the pictures. Honestly. Maybe it is silly, but I don't want to remember that as a happy day. It was a hard and shitty day. At best, I will settle for remembering it as a solemn day.

I know myself well enough to have realized that Saturday was my reason to keep moving: a goal, something to get to. But with that goal now surpassed, the pain is a lot harder to deal with. Nothing to plan for; nothing that needs to be done for him; just very normal days to deal with.

So it's hard to walk in this alternate reality where everything in the world is normal and fine, except for my wife and I. It's just a weird, weird feeling.

But we have found some reprieve in humor (our most oft used coping/deflective mechanism). With our own jokes turning a tad dark, we've found help in the form of our favorite red-haired giant: Conan O'Brien. Our first Monday home was his first on the Tonight Show (something we'd both looked forward to for a time now). We haven't missed any of the 8 shows yet, and luckily we've been able to laugh through all of them.
So at least we've found one normal thing in this alternate reality; yes, we still have Conan.