Goddamn

Today I went with Dave and Judi to my friend Ellen's memorial service.

Ah, let me just get this over with:

I hate it when I go to a memorial service and everyone there keeps saying that we should all laugh and be joyful! We shouldn't be sad that our friend is gone! She would have wanted us to laugh and have a good time!

I hate that.

Yeah, I know, I seem to hate everything, don't I?

Here's my beef with happy-happy-joy-joy memorial services:

I hate it when people tell me how to feel about anything. My friend Ellen died last month, goddamn it, and I'm angry and I'm sad about it still and I don't want to laugh and pretend that life is one goddamn serving of sticky sweet joy after another. It's not. Sometimes--a lot of the time, actually--life is ugly and unfair. Sometimes--often, actually--death is too painful and too soon. I want to be angry and sad about that. I'm angry that my friend is dead of cancer at the age of fifty. I don't want to laugh and be joyful. I want to wail and cry and shake my fist at the universe.

I'm so goddamn ungrateful, I know.

I'm not trying to say that I didn't love Ellen or that I don't treasure a lot of the time that I had with Ellen because I did and I do. When she was healthy we saw each other at the studio and we had dinner with friends from time to time and I enjoyed her company and I hope she enjoyed mine. That was several years worth of friendship right there. At the end of her life, I offered what help I could and she took me up on it when she needed it. I was scared and sorry that I wasn't stronger so that I could be more and do more for her, but I wasn't and I just did the best that I could. I'm not a good person. I'm just me. So I did the best I could and I was glad to be able to do that. When she died it was completely expected and it still felt like a goddamn sucker punch.

So that's that.

And the rest:

Ellen's memorial service ("...not service, celebration--sorry, Ellen," one woman corrected herself) was decent. It was a decent send off. There were people who told funny stories about Ellen. There were people who told what they hoped would be funny stories but that weren't very funny stories in the end about Ellen. Her sisters were there, the one who visited before Ellen died and the one who didn't visit before Ellen died. Her mother was there. Her father was there. Ellen's partner Ruth was there. Ellen's oncologist was there. There was a slide show with pictures of Ellen being a baby and then a child and then a high school graduate and then a college graduate and then an adult who had a home and a job and a family and friends and then a woman with cancer and no hair and then a woman dying in her bed at home.

Ellen's memorial service (not service, celebration) was held in a church where my old cello teacher, Janis Miller, used to hold our recitals. Before today, the last time I was in that church was about twenty-one or twenty-two years ago. I was in high school. I played a duet with another of Janis's students. His name was Alan, I think. It was the last recital I ever played. David was there and my friend Robert was there, too. Not too long after, Robert killed himself. So that was that. Before that duet with Alan, I played nothing but solos. I played in perhaps six recitals at that church and the only piece I remember with any certainty was a gavotte by David Popper, Popper's Gavotte No. 2 in D Major, Op 23. There was a run of harmonic overtones in that piece that gave me nightmares and tore up my hands besides.

Oh, who cares now?

I don't, but I miss everyone and everything anyway. I miss Ellen. I miss Ellen and I miss Robert and I miss Alan and Janis and I even miss Popper's goddamn gavotte that gave me nightmares and tore up my hands.