What Was Your Aunt Barbara Like?

Thanks to the trail of two Joe bloggers, I am glad to meet Aunt Barbara. It's eerie that not only did I have an Aunt Barbara but just as Barbara has a sidekick named Helen that too was my mother's name. Further evidence that the best drag queens are in suburbia.

Reasons Pending

My aunt's memorial service today was everything that she was -- tasteful, brief, dramatic, dancing around and with spirituality, mysterious, frustrating, peaceful, precise. confident, frightened, angry, confusing, graceful, distant. The woman from Episcopal church presiding over the service used the word "regal" at least 15 times. She said my aunt reminded her of a number of actresses the golden age, a list that included Loretta Young, Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn and then, she added, "though not actresses, Jackie Kennedy and Babe Paley."

It was the first time I heard confirmed what I suspected when I got the news of her death. Like the precisely orchestrated service itself, the death itself was of her own design. Every sign was there, and the vicar said she felt it wasn't due to depression, just the sense of control she felt was so crucial.

I've started building a list of snapshot memories of this experience that I will likely write up later.

My cousin said that the death certificate said that the cause of death listed "reasons pending," but he added, "We know. We know."

I could have been here today

Headlines of the past 36 hours

• I got a customer alert call from Orbitz at 5 a.m. yesterday about the cancellation of all flights through Denver.
  
• I spent most of the next four hours trying to get through to customer service at Orbitz and United. The 5-8 voice prompts all ended with a hang up call.
• I worked with the travel agent who books my business trips on alternates. I often whne that I have to go through an agent instead of just booking it myself. This time, I consider him my best new friend since he finds a ticket, albeit at three times the original cost, 10 hours longer and with 1000 more miles.
• At 7 p.m., I begin a series of flights that take me from Oakland to Portland to Houston to Oklahoma City.
• The slight conjestion I had in the afternoon is developing into a miserable cold as I am wedged into the seat on the long Portland-Houston flight next to a two-year-old boy named Alberto who reaches out for my fingers several times and kisses my shoulder midway into the flight.
• I arrive in Oklahoma at 10:30 a.m. where it is a glorious 28 degress (I'm not being ironic; I'm a winter person) and bright, crisp and clear. If it were like this year-round I would move back.
  
• I arrive at my aunt's memorial service 20 minutes before it starts.