this too shall pass

Auntie Betty's funeral was today. She was, from the first time I met Mark's extended family, the sweetest and nicest of the aunties, no rough edges, no prickly places, no judgements, no haole hesitancy, just a warm smile and simple acceptance. She may have been the first in the family to have a Caucasian son-in-law. Maybe that helped. Though when I first entered the fam around 1977, it was mainly some of the cousins, the ones my own age who were stand-off-ish. That all feels so long ago, I hardly think of it. These days all those differences between the cousins don't matter so much -- who went to college, who worked construction or hotel, who married Japanese or Okinawan, who married haole or Filipino or Hawaiian, who is good in the kitchen and who can't manage her way around one, all those classic divides, matter less and less, as the aunties and uncles age, as the kids grow up and have their own kids, as we all age and gets less beautiful (2 of Peter's cousins had a hilarious ugly-man contest which we captured on film today), and everyone sort of looks forward to the funerals just cause it gets us all together.

A simple and intimate funeral, the emotion only hit when we walked up to the photo draped with leis, the heavy rectangular urn, and the elegant flower arrangements; when son Thomas struggled valiantly through the enormous lump in his throat to name all those the family wished to thank for their support; when he returned to his seat and let the tears come as his sister, wife and 13-year old son all reached out their hands to hold up his bearish body, to log on to the mutual magnetic field that so intensely connects families at these times, to bring him home; when the pastor announced that "our thoughts are with the family of Toshi Arakawa", and startled, I looked at Mark who, having heard only moments earlier, mouthed "last Thursday"; when the service ended, and sitting right in front of me was Toshi's wife, Aunty Sally, and I asked for the story that anyone in the midst of acute euphoric grief is ready to pour out (and any of us who've been there, is ready to hear): "What was it like at the end?"

We've been to a number of funerals for men in the family, but this is the first for an Arakawa auntie. I had a quick flash of the reality that lay ahead for our family, a ghost of Christmas future with our moms in the Tiny Tim chair flitted past my eyelids and dove back into unconscious before it could do much damage. It went into hiding almost before I noticed it, like a dream that slips away as your eyes open in the morning. Please, God, let me hold onto my precious illusions a while longer.