Choir and Steve

This winter thing is starting to get on my nerves. Though I love snow and blustering winds and all that, I get more and more lazy. At work I find myself just doing things I darn well feel like doing.

It’s a good thing I went to services tonight rather than to Steve’s wake. The choir was on the verge of chaos. A lot of people weren’t there (NJ teachers’ convention weekend), and there were only 2 sopranos. It was perhaps a mercy that the cantor was too ill from her chemo to come, because she is very fussy about having everything just right. One of the sopranos is super good, though, and she stood in for the cantor.

I am not worried about the cantor, though I am very sorry about what she has to go through. She told us that the doctors told her that her breast cancer would most likely be cured by treatment, that it wasn’t the nastiest kind. However, knowing what happened to Steve after he overworked himself, I am relieved that she stayed home.

I recited the Mourner’s Kaddish for Steve.

A. was home when I got back. He said that there were a lot of firemen at the wake because Steve was a volunteer fireman. He was dressed in his uniform. A reports that Steve’s mother seemed to be on an even keel, but there was another relative who was, he thought, on valium. She kept swinging from telling funny stories to crying. At one point someone said “what are we going to do without him?” and she said “get smashed and laid,” bringing down on her head a lot of nervous giggles.

Funerals are like drills. They bore right down into a raw part of humanity.