I have been struggling to find the right way to sufficiently extend the words Thank You to everyone, near and far, who showed our family love and support yesterday. But the resounding thing that struck me was that Jim also felt like family to every single one of you too. Through all the stories, the love and the heart ache, it was so radiantly obvious how much he touched all of our lives in such a profound way. So the Thank You is really from us all to him; Thank You, Jim, (Husband, Brother, Father, Uncle, Friend) thank you for existing and making our lives better, happier, larger and so very much sweeter. Thank you to everyone who lugged a cooler up the hill, brought food to share, treats to eat, drinks to sip and love to charge abound though this house; that holds his memory in every crevice. (Robbie, you are a tireless, magical creature, like a frigging golden unicorn-flying-pony who makes a killer clam and lobster chowder) We thought at one point the house might be crying, as the rain seemed to be falling off the roof edges on a beautiful crisp sunny day; but then soon realized that the irrigation system dad hooked up to drip down the roof eaves to cool the house had kicked in. (yup, in real life, this exists, that guy…)
The fiery inferno of sadness is cooled, even if temporarily, by closeness, hugs and the sweet words “I am so sorry, I love you.” And yesterday was most certainly another world record broken for hugging. I mean, I had to stretch and limber up at one point just to not get a repetitive strain injury in my shoulders.
I think we all knew from the moment we all got ready yesterday morning, that we could temporarily throw our tears to the floor and walk over them because we were all wearing his bright, Hawaiian shirts and the collective love would get us through an event, in a place that none of us wanted to go to. The 30 seater hired bus picked the family up at 8am and I think the bus driver likely wondered why this gregarious bunch of flashily dressed tourists wanted to ever be delivered to a crematorium. As a family, on a bus, all together we are a force of nature. I don’t think we even need a destination we could easily spend entire holidays just driving around in a bus.
The service needed to occupy two separate rooms (one with a live video feed) at the facility because so many people showed up, early on a Saturday morning, to say goodbye. So many people and so much love. Words and stories were sent to be read from some of my dad’s closest friends in England, (once I get permission from the authors, I will post them here to be shared).
Lorna, Ted, Glen and Trudy and I, all paid our tributes to him for the eulogy(s). Everyone single one was so amazingly heart-felt and full of every thing that was him. I managed to get through an astounding one paragraph of ours while Trudy read the rest of it. I blamed my red leaky eyes and wobbly voice on having been suffering from severe allergies…to Trudy. I am allergic to Trudy.
The service overall was perfect and dad would have been pretty thrilled with all of it. We put dirt on the top of the coffin in the shape of the cross and my shaky hands (or on purpose) made some extra fall out in a lump at the neck of the cross; I whispered to mum that the cross had a bumpy neck just like he did. We both giggled through our tears. He would have liked that quite a lot. I still flounder with the past and present tense when I think and talk about him. The finality of it all really seems to mock and surprise every time I think about it; I have too many questions to still ask him and wonder how the clawing feeling of never seeing him dance or tell another rubbish joke is ever going to feel less like a hot knife in butter, each time I forget to remember that he is gone. But happy memories don’t fade, they seem to be almost getting more vivid than even reality itself. Nothing can change or take that and we can smile.
A shamefully large percentage of this blog was written on my iPhone, one autocorrect that has plagued me from the start was ‘strong’ being incessantly changed to ‘string’ (every-damn-time) “he was so string” really packs a tiny fisted punch. The other, more recent one, was ‘funeral’ being changed to ‘fun reel’ perhaps it’s the way I type, but after yesterday I see now that perhaps that was more apt than not. That really was the most epic fun reel of a funeral ever. The love in the air was palpable. We laughed we cried, we danced, we ate, we drank, we hugged, we blew horns, we remembered, we made human pyramids (not sure why that happened) we shot cannons and we all paid our deepest most heartfelt honour to a man, who in his life made it so that a massive group of 100+ people would not have been anywhere other than celebrating him, in his home on a big green hill. Jim, we know you would have been so proud. We adore you.
