Well, I'm back from my whirlwind trip to New York. I'm still a little tired from it, but that will pass in a day or so.

On Monday morning I flew from Milwaukee to La Guardia Airport in New York for my grandmother's funeral. I was met there by my brother John, my sister Donna, and her boyfriend Matt. It was nice to finally meet him after only hearing about him for years.

We went straight to the funeral home from there. The casket was closed due to the state she was in, but I was asked, since I was considered immediate family, if I wanted to see her. I declined. My most vivid memory of how my grandmother looked is the way she looked when I was dancing with her at my wedding a few years back. It's a good image of her, and I didn't want to replace it. I'm very happy remembering her that way, alive and vibrant and laughing and dancing, and not the way she looked in death.

After the first viewing of the day, my immediate family (mom, dad, the kids, and Matt) went to dinner at a local diner, then went back to the house for a little while before going back for the evening viewing. That came and went, and afterward John, Donna and I went out to get a bite to eat, had some drinks, and went home to crash for the night.

Tuesday morning was an early one. We all got up around 6:15 to get ready, since a limo was picking us up to bring us to the funeral home. We went there, met with the rest of the family, said a quick prayer then all headed out to the funeral mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe (which was at 9:15). It was a quick mass, with a few readings, at which my brother, my sister Ellen and I acted as honorary pall bearers for Grandma's coffin as it was brought up the aisle of the church. After than, it was off to the cemetery in Staten Island so she could be laid to rest with my grandfather.

Quick aside, regarding the mass - I've been to a lot of masses in my lifetime, and while I don't really consider myself very religious anymore, the priest said something that both shocked and impressed me during the service. He was speaking about the creation story in Genesis (the whole "In the beginning," seven days of creation bit), and actually said "the creation story should neither be considered science nor history", but more of a general understanding that the world was created by God, regardless of how it actually came to pass. In all my years of Catholic upbringing and going to mass on Sundays, I have never heard a priest regard the Genesis creation story as anything but cold hard truth, disbelievers be damned. I mentioned it to the priest after the service, and his response was "That's more a belief of fundamentalism, and that's what gets you in trouble nowadays."

There was a quick ride to the cemetery in Staten Island, and another prayer was said for my grandmother while the family placed individual roses on her coffin before each person left. I was doing okay until this part, but I kind of lost my composure at this time. It was just the sheer finality of it, knowing that not only had she pased away, but now even the funeral and respect paying aspects of it were coming to an end. I gathered myself as best I could, and the entire family left.

Back in Brooklyn, everyone gathered for a dinner after the cemetery to just talk and be with each other before we all went our separate ways again. John drove me back to the airport on his way back to Connecticut, and I got back to the house here last night at around 7:30 (would have been faster, but it seems that in the day and a half I was gone, they knocked down the exit ramp I needed for construction and I had to take an unplanned detour through downtown Milwaukee). Now, I'm just back online and job hunting.

It was nice getting back to NYC, even though the circumstances sucked and I had no time at all to hunt up old friends and see them. In a few weeks we'll be going back, this time all of us, so the baby can get his first bite of the Big Apple and spend some time with my family. This was when we would have been introducing Gabriel to his great-grandmother, but sadly those plans have kind of changed.