smacky and bucky

Home sick on Friday. Friday evening we received a call. A death in Laura's family. Friday night we were at the train station at 1AM picking up one of her sisters and her husband. Saturday morning we were at the airport picking up another sister. We had six people staying in our two- bedroom house all weekend. Not knowing the deceased, it was my job to run errands: to the grocery store, to Target (three times!) and stay home and answer the phone (which rang continuously all weekend). Laura helped deal with the funeral home, cleaning the deceased's house, and driving her sisters around.

Very tense weekend. As I said, I didn't know the person (only met her once) but this was Laura's stepsisters' mother (my father-in-law's ex-wife), so everyone in the house has been sad and tense, breaking into tears at random moments. Work is now a vacation from the insanity. Got up this morning and snuck around while everyone slept. Made a cup of coffee and got dressed in the dark. The funeral is scheduled for Tuesday (or Wednesday). She was cremated, and the funeral is not going to be in a church, so they have some leeway in choosing the date, depending on when people can fly in and the weather (It's raining today, and they want to have it in a park). They are staying through this coming weekend, so this entire week will be me sneaking around and keeping out of the way. Yesterday I spent the entire day alone, while everyone else was out. Between answering the phone, I finished a novel (reading, not writing) and watched a good portion of the 2004 World Series of Poker. That was the year "Fossil Man" won the whole thing and made it look so damn easy.

It's a bizarre situation, because I'm on the outside. I can't share in the stories about the woman's life, I don't take part in any of the discussions about what needs to be done, I just get orders from my wife to go places and pick up things. The woman lived a short drive from our house, so our place is the meeting point, and the hotel. I'm not complaining, it's just that everything is tense and the house is crowded and there's nowhere to go to keep out of the way.