2007-08-28 - 11:23 p.m.
yesterday we had my grandma's funeral. it was my job to give the appreciation for coming speech. my sister had written one out for me, but i couldn't make myself say it because it said that my earliest memory was of her feeding everyone. it would've been a really good speech because it segued right into the reception after, but it honestly wasn't my earliest memory of my grandma. that memory is of her buying me a gamepro magazine with a yellow background and the joker on the cover discussing the new batman game for the NES based on the 1990-something movie. she bought it for me at the manoa longs after dinner in a restaurant that's no longer there. i told those gathered that that was my first memory, but it was kind of mundane for that day. i decided, that rather than tell a lie, i'd rather leave everyone with a more lasting memory of my grandmother; her honesty. my mom once told me a story about how after hurricane iniki, an aid worker told her to tell a little lie to get more money from the government, but she wouldn't do it because it wasn't honest. for me, that was a better way to remember her than by the food she would always have for us. i wanted to make the speech a little light hearted, but as i kept talking, i got more and more choked up, and by the end, i just wanted to get off stage before i started to break down, because then i'd feel like i was just hamming it up. i had everything i wanted to say written out, but as i kept going, i started to just cut things out here and there so i could get off stage. i didn't want to be the guy who cried in front of everyone.
it's funny though, i was fine until i got up there, infact, me and my dad were joking just minutes before i went on stage that the pastor made us stand up to sing amazing grace because he caught the both of us nodding off during his message.
i also thought about making a smart-alec remark about my earliest memory being mundane and about how we'd had enough about mundane stories already for the day. i went back and forth about that being in bad tastes. it probably would've been.
but yeah...
if there's one thing i hate about funerals it's how the pastors always make it about god. that's fine if they want to talk about god, but god dammit, the day is supposed to be about the deceased and those assholes always take 40 fucking minutes to talk about something else. it's always the same message too... and it's always fucking boring as hell. i'm feeling less and less guilty about sleeping everytime...
i feel so awkward around my family too because i don't know any of them, i don't feel particularly close to any of them either because well, i'm not. i'm a city boy, and they're all country. yeah... i'm just not meant to really be in my family i guess.
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