Full circle
Full circle. Today we went to Bonnie's childhood friend's mom's funeral. Was ok as far as they go - funny because when we got there there was no parking. So I just did what I always do and made a parking spot somewhere convenient for me. Then on our way into the chapel (?) or whatever we were greeted by some guy in a black suit - barely looked old enough to drive a car, and he tried to tell us that the room was full (impressive if nothing else...perhaps even bad planning?) We continued to walk right past him to check this for ourselves. Yup - it was full.
"You can watch it here in this room on TV"
Bonnie was NOT going to do that. She spotted her mom, and they made a swap - so her mom and I proceeded to the 'other' room. Very reminiscent of days gone past in the highschool cafeteria. There was a cafeteria bar at the back, and several round tables with wooden chairs around them scattered throughout the room. Sitting down, I noted that the TV was ancient, and had a very low res picture of the people in the main room. I could actually see the lines between the lines, people looked like blurry blobs with scanlines through them. This should be good, I thought.
They started with the standard prayers and such - during which I secretly played my tangle game on my treo. Once it got to the official Eulogy done by the son, I started paying attention. He took it pretty good considering she had died on Saturday, the same day of his wedding. He mentioned that this was the only way she could attend, and thus justified her passing with a smile.
I've been thinking about this a bit. People still dying in their 50's. Pretty scary considering one could think of that as life is only half over. That's just at the point where your kids 'should' be moving out, and you can start thinking about retiring, finally, finally start enjoying life. Well, hopefully you've been enjoying it for the past 50 or you're SOL I guess eh?
So how much time do we have here on this crowded planet? I'd like to say that I subscribe to the live for today mentality, but it's simply not true. I totally live for tomorrow - I'm constantly catching myself drifting off into my own head thinking about what I'm going to be doing, in an hour, tomorrow, 2 weeks, 5 years, etc. I'm in my own head so much that I often will miss things that people say directly to me. I guess I'm kinda a pro at giving the expected responses because they will keep talking for a long time before I realize that I'm not even paying attention to them. Not that that's a good thing, it just seems to be the way I work - if I leave things on auto-pilot and don't sit in the driver's seat all the time.
That's another things I've been thinking about. Auto-pilot. I can easily function all day in this mode. It can even perform complex tasks like writing. I'm not actually thinking, just reacting. My problem is that when I was a kid, I despised memorization of any type. I thought it was too hard / unnecessary. Which eventually it was - to a point. I never memorized addition or multiplication tables, I just found ways of figuring it out simple enough that I could 'automate' the process. No thinking. However, over the past 10 years I've realized that this may not have been a smart move. It may have been 'innovative', however, memory is tremendously faster than automated tasks. I could never get those speed math tests. But I figured it would never make much of a difference. Heh. What you don't use, you lose, right.
So now I'm stuck with sub-standard memory - of which to repair I believe will take years of constant practice. Perhaps I should start with the multiplication tables - though it may be hard to shut off the automated processes.....