Preparing for memorial service...

I haven't written since writing about my stepfather Tom dying because there was not much to say after that.  I just now wrote what I will be saying at his memorial service on Sunday, or some version of it anyway.  It's so crazy impossible to sum up 33 years of life with someone that I just have to know I'm going to fail and do it anyway.

As my stepsister says the biggest difference between preparing for a memorial and for a wedding is that you have a year to prepare for a wedding and about a week to prepare a memorial.  This is quite true.  There are so many people involved, so many emotions, so many ideas of who Tom is and then the details like: caterers, guest books, photos, set up, etc...I kick into some weird plane that can be summed up in one word: director.  As in theater director.  Which I am.  Sometimes I do this with grace, sometimes not, but if you give me an event where people show up and stuff happens to which they pay attention and sit in chairs while doing so, it becomes in my mind: theater.

That does not mean it's not sacred in any way, because for me the theater is the sacred-secular and because this memorial is happening not in a church but a maritime museum, it is that, too.

But it's real life.

And then again, anyone who knows the theater I do knows - not much difference there either.  My theater was/has been/does veer more and more in that direction as well.

However, I have strange obsessions about: sound, possible interference, sight lines, where will people sit, will they feel comfortable, who says what when...how is that structured/not structured...

And of course I am not the only one having these feelings, which is what makes this experience so different from when my father died.

When my father died, I was basically the only one who was left standing who could make decisions.  There were others involved, one a lot, but I was the only one capable of organizing myself out of a paper bag.  Hence, my role was clear.

Here, it is not so clear because I am not The Only One.  This is a good thing of course but it takes some getting used to, which sometimes I do with grace and sometimes not at all.

But I'm here.  And meditating and praying and doing all the Stuff I do to try to stay on the near side of sane.

I  had my hair and nails done today.  Always a go to place when all else seems nutty.

I still feel Tom's presence around and about, especially when things seem like they may be getting thorny.  I feel his compassionate tendencies and his ability to be discerning without being judgmental and I find myself surrendering to that slipstream...which works much better than forcing an issue with myself or someone else.

I spent a lovely evening at one of the many amazing wharf cafes in Maine, meeting and re-meeting members of the extended family, including many nephews last seen when they were quite small.  The person I spoke with the most was my stepsister-in-law who was born and bred in NYC.  Most people think I was mad to leave London, except people like her who love New York in that way that some of us do.  It's like a first love that never leaves you no matter if you split up or not.

Having said that, I am happy to be sitting here now in Maine listening to the crazy loud bullfrogs in the pond on a cool but humid night rather than boiling in my studio in NYC.

I just wish there were other reasons for being here, and it's so hard to believe when I wake up again tomorrow morning that Tom won't be sitting in the chair in the den that I am looking at right now, smiling in his particular way saying sing songy when I trundle blearily down the stairs many hours later than he's woken up "Good morning, love."

But he's here, too.  I know that.  It's our loss he isn't here the way he was, but I feel he is somehow here even more powerfully.  Even if not in the form that can buy me a stuffed lion named Harold.