It's all about me after all

[muckefuck]

So if that last post about my grandma's funeral sounded like an attempt to rationalise an essentially selfish decision, then there's good reason for it. As I said to monshu the next day, "There's no question whether it's a selfish decision. The question is whether it's unreasonably selfish." At the risk of oversimpliflying almost to the point of caricature, I think it comes down to a basic conflict between my parents' inherited sense of duty and their stabs at 60s-era self-actualisation--a conflict lovingly bequeathed to me.

After all, from the traditional point of view, there's no conflict: Funerals are a responsibility that comes with being part of a family. The only excuse for not attending is being in some way indisposed--too sick to travel, serving overseas and unable to get leave, in jail, etc. But the countercultural response to this is a rejections of empty forms in favour of a focus on those experiences which enable one to live a more open, more honest, less stressful and contradictory sort of life. Under that ethos, attending a funeral has to be evaluated in terms of the benefit to those experiencing it. Insofar as you need one in order to provide closure and a space for grieving, it's a worthwhile thing; to the extant that it's a hypocritical exercise in social posturing, it's not only unnecessary but actively harmful to one's personal growth.

My grandmother had absolutely no use for hippy-dippy sentiments, so if I were acting in accordance with "the will of the deceased", I'd be in a suit and tie right now lugging her coffin to Calvary. (Of course, if her will meant much of anything to me, I would hardly be a man-loving apostate, would I?) But positivism has no real use for such fuzzy conceptions such as the "will" of a person who no longer exists and postmodernism deconstructs such phrasing into a tool of reactionary social oppression. (See, grandpa was right about not sending me to college at a "hotbed of socialism".) I believe as firmly as I do anything that my grandmother's spirit is not wavering in the aether to take in who showed and who didn't. The only people doing that are my relatives, and I learned after much difficulty that caring what my relatives think of me is a road to unhappiness.

The only person whose opinion really counts for me in the matter is my mother's and she--true to the conflict of being a mash-up between pre-boomer quasi-hippie and good daughter from a petit-bourgeois home--has been sending out her share of mixed messages: Disappointed with the decision while insisting that she wouldn't have presented one if it weren't okay to say 'no'. I don't think she's just being brave when she tells me that she doesn't need the shoulder to lean on and so far her disappointment has centred around formal gestures like not having a pallbearer from our branch of the family(*). That's just an approach guaranteed to rankle with me, for all sorts of reasons.

Well, in truth she's not the only person. I care a great deal what monshu thinks, even if I'll do my own thing regardless. And, of course, I want to find a solution that I myself can live without a lot of hand-wringing and second-guessing. For a while, I thought a good compromise might be showing up for Thanksgiving--something I took a principled stance against a decade ago and haven't revisited since--but I'm beginning to question the usefulness of that compromise. Of maybe I'm just too spoiled and solipsistic, to jealous of my own free time to commit to it. I'm sure my grandparents would think so.


* Part of me responds to the elegant symbolism of this gesture, and part of me rankles at the thought that certain branches of the family are automatically excluded because this or that sibling didn't have the forethought to produce offspring with penises. If what you want is a child of my mother with upper body strength, don't look at the bookish out-of-shape wuss and not the mother of four portable but extremely heavy children.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Fortunately we're removed from all that. bunj worked there for one summer, the rest of us have carefully maintained our non-involvement. To me, it's one more example of the problems inherent to making your family your business partners.

ah then...

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

To well chosen buffers and detachment. Its sad all it takes is one persistantly insecure or selfish personality to poison an enterprise.

On that note - a restorative thanksgiving - I hope you and yer love have occasion to get your food groove on as it were....