the burial suit

a couple years back i was invited to a wedding. i figured people wear suits to weddings, so i went out and bought one. it was expensive and fit me nicely and i got two shirts for it "just in case". the total for the suit, shoes, ties (got two of those, too, "just in case") and cufflinks (didn't realize i needed those when i bought the shirts, alas) and belt and socks came to well over too much.

i went to the wedding and i was the only person not "in" the wedding who was wearing anything fancier than jeans. people kept mistaking me for a groomsman or whatever those guys are called who get free tuxedo rentals from the groom.

my embarrassment at that point is beside the point. the point is this: because i paid so much for the suit, and because i have no use for a suit (not even for an interview, no sir) outside of weddings, to which i am rarely invited, i jokingly dubbed the suit my "burial suit," proclaiming that i paid so damned much for it that i expected to be buried in it, since i certainly wouldn't be buying another one before my demise.

i wore it once or twice to go with my mom to services. i left it at my folks' house because i had no use for it at my home.

and then, my grandmother died. and, much later, but not too much later, her sister died, too. both times, i wore my "burial suit," oh, so cleverly named, to their burials. i buried both my grandmother and my great-aunt in my damned "burial suit", and i that's only slightly metaphorical, since both were buried under the aegis of jewish tradition, which demands that family members perform the act of piling dirt on the coffin in the hole.

jewish tradition also involves the tearing of garments as a symbol of mourning. because we live in more enlightened times, nowadays, the rabbi brings a little black ribbon pin which you can stick on your lapel and have him cut with a swiss army knife. that satisfies the demands of tradition, at least to reform standards (interestingly, the internets do not reveal a torahic basis for rending (keriah). seems it's all "custom" and not especially "law", for whatever difference that makes. in my case, i suppose, it makes a difference: since personally, i value custom more than law.).

when he put that goofy little pin on my lapel, i didn't want it. i wanted to do the real thing: to tear up my "burial suit" and never see it again. all around me stood my living family, the few people in this world for whom i care deeply.

i realized: the next time i wore my burial suit would be to bury one of them.

i don't believe in much, but i do believe in this: if we can't take something useful away from any experience we have, then we're wasting our very short time having those experiences. the same goes for customs and traditions, after a fashion. those that can teach us something are worthwhile, those that cannot, are not. if we partake in a custom or ceremony, yet bring away nothing from it, we have wasted our time.

aunt ruby is buried, but she was a smart one. by giving of herself she achieved immortality as well as most any who have lived. things mundane may be sublime: aunt ruby's pencil sharpener sits on my desk at work, her paper shredder eats my junk mail. her spirit lives on in my print queue: a poem that i wrote her for christmas waited until this morning to find its way onto the paper of a freshly powered-on printer. but these things are all of her, these are her accomplishments, and what i bring home from my family's (evident) burial ceremony of post-burial joviality is that i am still alive, and kicking, and all that, and able to keep on keeping on.

but to what end?

maybe i'll get back to that. for now, a digression that may bring us to a point: for this sort of retrospective i often dig around in the archovies. naturally, then, this came up, and, a few clicks away, this.

i wrote myself a note last year for a blog post i really do intend to write. maybe it's this one, i hope. last year, i entered into an adult relationship, and in doing so, i became myself an adult. i was astonished by this just this weekend when i found myself doing such adult things as directing a move-in and paying for an expensive dinner. and yet, i am still a kid when it matters.

i don't believe in much, but i do believe in this: i picked the right woman. i've got problems and worries and obsessions and difficulties and imaginary conversations and logic and illogic but at the end of it all, when i ask myself "so what?" i always answer: "i love her, and she loves me." there's really nothing more to ask after that point but "where to now?"

it pleases my mother that i'm a romantic. yesterday was the longest span of time i've spent away from 203 since she surprised me at work. it was too long. that's me, the romantic.

i write things carefully, sometimes, and sometimes i despair that the things i write carefully do not receive a careful reading. my folks gave me a ribbing about this, apparently they read the blog but did not understand what hubris it is that elevates me five stories above earth eternal. in my diggings i found, linked above, the uncommented-upon explanation that my previous relationship was founded on a childish retreat and sheltering from reality. perhaps even i did not read it closely enough.

two times in the past twenty four hours i've hinted at something that was on my mind, and 203 told me exactly what it was. 203 reads me closely, and i like it.

i fiddle and play with religion and the like because that is my hobby. it is my hobby because it has consumed humanity since the dawn of time and though i feel no pull to virgin or pigeon, the pull that others feel fascinates me. but i do not believe in nothing. i have thoughts on what's important and on what's going on. but the other day i wondered, should i just give up on the whole mess and spend that part of my time dealing with more productive things?

that's one of the tragic jokes of life, though, to not know what the productive things are, ever. you've just got to pick what's important based on the best available guess of the times. and there, in my burial suit, discomforted by the watered down cherry-picked subset of traditions that we were practicing to commemorate my aunt, my thin strand of core beliefs was reinforced, and in my disgust at a joke turned ugly, i reflected a little on what we have, all of us but aunt ruby: the future.

when 203 read my mind, she saw what bothered me: that she has a past. i have one too, but mine's about 2 years of real time and five minutes of story time. hers is about <really big number> of real time and 2 years of story time. that disparity (and the events that comprise it (or more accurately, my absence from them)) is difficult for me to handle, but of course, handle it i will. (aunt ruby didn't teach me to ramble: i picked that up on my own. i'm coming to a point, i can almost feel it.)

those pasts, like aunt ruby, are gone for good. we can look back at them and learn from them, or wish that we'd interacted differently with them, and miss them, or not miss them; we can remember them with sadness and longing, nostalgia or revulsion, jealousy and fear, understanding and confusion, happiness and contentment. but all we can do is remember them. the past is a set of tools to help us deal with the future, where our eyes are set.

eventually, i'll bury my parents and maybe a lot of other people too. but that realization, like my worries and my difficulties, should be faced in my burial suit, buried by loving hands and thanked for all their guidance, remembered with honor, and then left behind as i move on into the future i create.