Fallen Prices (Well... Cornelsons, really)

Last weekend there was a funeral for one of my father's uncles in Seattle, so Hava & I packed up and headed south, prepared for her to meet the entire Price clan. It was only the second funeral I'd ever been to, after Sabrina's in high school which I helped Mike film. Strange things, funerals. Especially this one, especially now. I've lived so long away from organized religion, and the deceased in question (Jim Cornelson) was in fact a minister, spent 40 years doing same in Korea, and had written & planned his own funerary service. Back in the religious context of my childhood again (fundi-Xtian via Mennonite), forgotten feelings came back as though foreign. Certain family members even act as symbols of my repression, for example, my Aunt who never swears. Anyway, it was a good occasion to re-examine my relationship with "the church," even if that just means being more aware of how it shaped my personality. I was reading Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" the other day (recommended read), and in one of them, (6?) he chastises the eponymous poet for rejecting religion because he realized the ideas of his childhood were based on a worldview too simple to hold water. The movie Dogma brings up the same idea in a similar metaphor, a glass of water: when you're young your glass is smaller and it takes less to fill. My relationship with religion now is anthropological, though I harbor a more personal view of spirituality. I am not without faith; but it is tempered and moulded by some pretty intense Socratic skepticism. And that's an entirely different post; suffice it to say, funerals make for great mirrors.

And all this religion business is bedrock - funerals are the quintessential function of religion. The issue is how we deal with death. It's funny, but during the service, I kept thinking about my funeral, and how I wouldn't want it to be anything like it - no hymns, no flowers, no crying, certainly no $5k casket - but then, is the funeral for me, or for those who knew me? It seems from a Christian perspective [note: can't say "the"] that the wishes of the deceased should be honored as though they were watching from heaven. I'm struggling with how to gauge the efficacy of my preferred funeral, where folks are seated during a performance of the Adagio Sostenuto from Beethoven's 29th Sonata, then gradually progress from that somber music into drunken revelry & remembrance, sorta like an Irish wake. Hm.

Photo gallery here.

the music: Sigur Ros, Takk