Well it's been an emotional few weeks on my end. I promised certain family members that I'd post pics of my grandfather's funeral:
The first night (the Panahida-mass for the dead) was pretty emotional. As you can see from the pic, my grandfather looks pretty much nothing like he did when he was in better health just a year-and-a-half ago.
My favorite part (and the part that I think dido would have hated) was when the funeral home played piano standards such as "My Heart Will Go On" and "Over The Rainbow." I really found it amusing and made several comments about it at the service.
During the service, my sister would not enter the room where dido was being laid out, the room was fuller that I'd expected (maybe 40 people), and my mom and I broke down and cried hysterically near the end of the mass.
My aunt asked me at one point before the mass if it was just as hard to lose a family member when they were sick than it was to lose a healthy one. My other grandfather died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 70 in 1991. I was in fifth grade. It happened on December 20th. It was the most traumatic and life defining experience of my life. I cried nonstop for three days straight, took a break for a day, then cried most of Christmas Eve (the night where his family gets together every year for a traditional Ukrainian meal). Since that December in 1991, I'd been preparing myself for when there'd be another death in my family. I told her that being prepared certainly made it easier for me, although the loss was just as devastating in its own way.
Before the service, my mom and I recalled stories of my grandfather, her father. I mentioned to her a story that I think she'd never heard, rather nondescript as far as stories go, but one I remember like it was yesterday. When I was six or seven, we were up at the cottage for a summer weekend in Port Franks. Dido had to go to the bank (the Bank of Montreal branch still stands at the corner of Main Street and Highway 21). So the two of us piled into that crazy boat of a maroon Oldsmobile (a Ninety-Eight that said "Good Morning" through a screen in the dashboard everytime you turned it on) and headed down to town. When we got to the bank, I opened the door and went to lock it when dido looked over at me and asked me why I was locking the door. And I told him that in Michigan, my mom always locked the doors. He came around and pulled the lock up and told me that Canada was the safest country he'd ever known and that there was next to no crime there, that there was no need to lock the doors on the car, that no one would ever steal it. So we went inside and came out fifteen minutes later. Sure enough, the car was still there, unlocked and untouched. Though to lock or not to lock is not even a question in today's world, everytime I pass that BoM, I think of him.
The next morning, we headed over to the church where I tried to sing my heart out.
During the mass, there are a lot of sitting and standing and kneeling parts as well as the crossing of oneself during certain parts. About ten pages into the 72 page mass (small pages, I promise), I realized that not a second after I made my sign of the cross, my mom on my left side was mimicking me. As a test, I missed a sign and so did she, so I was like "okay, this is strange." Well no sooner do we get to the heavy lifting (sitting, standing, kneeling) than I realize that everyone is watching me, as I was sitting in the front row. There came a point in the mass where in my church, you wait to kneel, but I turned to verify the action behind me and saw some regulars (this was a different church) go down on their knees. And I proceeded to do this little (in hindsight, quite embarrassing) 10 degree knee bend, stand back up, repeat times four or five before I decided it was safe for me to kneel and not look like a complete idiot. After the mass, my entire family made fun of my little dance (I'll have to bust it out in the clubs). I read 72 pages of Ukrainian text and was the only one in my family who knew when to sit versus stand versus kneel (one outta two ain't bad) and I'm the one getting teased!
From my vantage point in the front row, I got some great pics of the priest giving a memorial speech about my grandfather. It was so personal and so moving that I get all teared up (more than my mom, even). He spoke of my dido's faith in God and how that faith led him to Canada. He spoke of my grandfather's family--the people he was leaving behind. He got to one point where he spoke of the nursing home and how my grandfather never complained about his condition which was hilarious and my mom and I smiled at each other because he was a total complainer. It was a very touching and somehow very lengthy speech. I'm not sure how I managed to stop weeping long enough to grab this pic, but I'm glad I did.
I grabbed this pic just before the pallbearers took the casket back to the hearse. The priest poured sand on the casket in the shape of a cross while talking about how the deceased returns back to the earth. My dido is getting cremated and shipped to Ukraine where we have a family crypt (from what I understand, it's pretty big).
From the left: tato, Riz, me, Teddy, Ross, mom, Ann, Ted, Karyn, Jerry, his fiancee (I can't remember her name), and, of course, baba in front of mom.
We all headed to the nursing home where my grandmother (who has Alzheimer's Disease) was totally not expecting us. Of all the people she picked to forget, she forgot my grandfather first. When the nursing staff tried to explain to her that he had died, she knew they were talking about "the man across the hall," but didn't connect him to "dido." She wanted to know how my mom was able to round up the entire family. She also wanted to know why we were all dressed up. She brought up in the middle of the family conversation that she wondered where dido was, because he would have really liked to see everyone together again. I nearly burst out crying.
In the midst of all the sadness, baba kept cracking jokes. She called my uncle Ross a millionaire and at one point asked him how they were letting him back in here (the nursing home). No one knew what she meant, but we all agreed it was funny. At one point, during a silent spot, she joked that if no one started talking, she was going to turn on the TV. The conversation somehow turned from 100% Ukrainian to 50/50. She was so happy to see everyone. I was glad to see her happy.
The cousins, from the left: Riz, Teddy, Karyn, Jerry, me!
The non-cousins, from the left: Anne & Ross (my mom's brother), Ted (my mom's other brother, and his wife, Quina, was at home in Toronto), my mom and tato.
Such a sad event managed to end on a supremely happy note. My grandmother was ecstatic about seeing everyone, and everyone was so happy to see her in such good spirits.
