My grandma Hazel's funeral was today. I met tons of relatives I've never seen before, and caught up with those I haven't seen in ages. Let me say that I am entirely delighted with my mom's side of the family. They are all great people. Happy and crazy and funny all at once. My mom's cousins Nancy and Carl are my favorites--they live in Chippewa Falls and are good chums with Sarah and her family. I saw my cousin Todd!!!! I haven't seen him since I was six. He's thirtyish now, and he and his wife are expecting their first child. It was great to see him. In my memory he was always a hep cat...and he remains so after seeing him again. Cousin Tom (my mom's cousin, relation to me? I guess great-cousin or something) joked a lot about talking my parents into getting me a car. Twas good times. My dad's parents, my grandparents Ed and Sarah, are getting old too. Sarah is senile, and talks to herself and makes nonsense noises to me as if I were twelve. It was very sobering to spend time with them...grandpa turned 82 yesterday. They are the opposite in health: Ed has all his faculties but his body is disentegrating, and Sarah has lost her mind but is the perfection of health. It was a bit trying to see them. It caused me to write a lot of poetry, which I will post sometime when I get back to Madison.

This is my first funeral. I think I have been very lucky so far, but now it starts. My grandparents are old. It was strange, to sit and see my grandma Hazel laid out and thinking, as I held my mom's hand, that someday I have to go through this with her and my dad. And I have no brothers or sisters to help me out. It will be very lonely I think, even with other people there. I never knew my grandpa Gilbert, he died when my mom was a teenager. But I was glad to feel like part of a clan, today, like generations of love and hope and experience extend back from me into the past, that I am not just one girl in the world but that I have people to back me up. I have never felt that before. Even when we lived in the midwest my parents and I seldom saw more than immediate family. I never realized how much I missed it until today. I hope that from now on I will never be apart or be separated from them for too long. I hope it won't be another twelve years until I see Todd again. I hope that Nancy will have that Gatzke (yes, we are very polish on that side) family reunion in July. And my kids will always know their family, no matter how far apart. I hope that the next time we meet will not be another funeral but a celebration of togetherness and life. I miss my grandma, but she is better this way...so many health problems and unhappiness and memory loss she had for the last seven years, and I struggle to remember her as she was when I was younger and she had health and mind on her side. But nevertheless I know she raised three good kids and if she hadn't, I wouldn't be here in the same form as I am now. I thank her for that, and I hope that she is happy and that she gets some pretty wings to fly down and visit us on sometime soon. Or, should the Buddhist perception of things be true, I hope her soul is reborn someplace close to me, and that I will know her again.

Schmu!