If funerals are for the living, I shall not attend

If funerals are for the living, what then when the living, or one of the living, doesn't want to do to the funeral of a dead relative?

My Uncle El died a couple of days ago. My dad had the one sister and no brothers, and my mom was an only, so I have just him and my Aunt Marguerite as aunts and uncles. The funeral is Tuesday. I could surely get off work, but I am not interested.

I semi-swore to myself after my mom's death, at her funeral, that I would never need to see my oldest brother again. I put the issues of deaths of siblings out of mind as being decades in the future, barring accidents or early cancer or similar.

But, I forgot about El and Marguerite, and now El is dead.

And I don't want to go, and not just because he's is surely going to be there.

I also semi-swore to myself that, other than for possible courtesy visits to church when visiting my sister and her minister husband, that I never would set foot in a church again except to attend a concert or other artistic event.

I have no desire to go there, and, at a minimum, to be a hypocrite, and, at a maximum, be proselytized by Marguerite, or her daughter (both former parochial school teachers), or my oldest or second-oldest brothers, with the likelihood from greatest to least being in that order. Years ago, Marguerite sent me an Easter card that, in not so few of words, said "You know it's true," about fundamentalist Easter beliefs. A religious funeral among conservative Lutheran Christians is only likely to bring that all to the surface, not to mention that, pre-deconversion, I had been to her church umpteen times and some oldsters there may still know me.

No desire.

If funerals are for the living, I'm not going.

I then, with this adapted from handwritten journaling, thought about a poem. I had been thinking about writing one this afternoon. Hadn't sat down to do that.

Then, just after finishing up these notes, this extended haiku started to work its way out.

Death is for the dead
And life is for the living.
So don't fence me in.

Better yet, I won't
Fence myself by attending;
We're all better off.

Namaste for all —
A word that might well offend
Some others itself.

I touched dad's cold skin,
Satisfied that dead is dead
And shall remain so.

Schnittke's Requiem
Challenges old conventions;
Death is chaotic.

Emotional wounds
I shall not give, nor receive.
They will still result.

We will drift further.
I accept that is the price
Of preservation.

Frustration freedom, maybe?

I just did something I've not done for many years.

I left my online sobriety support group's meeting and chat room without saying good-nights to those there. I just clicked the X and shut the tab.

I had had enough, for tonight at least, of another person there.

He knows a lot about his subject field, which has everyday applications to just about everybody, but can be overbearing in saying do this, don't do that. Buy this, not that. Etc.

He can also at times go too far on light-hearted bantering type insults to sticking the needle. The latter, he seems to like to do to me.

Regular readers here know I'm a non-confrontational person. So, and figuring anyway that, he being my age, somebody in life has surely? maybe not? he's a boss, so could be hard to do at work? called him out on this, I just left.

I am not going to change him. The only thing to do is change myself, and without confrontation, simply state why I left if he asks me.

This had kind of been building on my side. On music, which kind of relates to his expertise, he's one of these people that claim vintage vinyl is oh so much better than CDs when blind tests prove otherwise. I dropped some brief comments on that once, quickly went nowhere. That was, I think, after I found out this person is a conspiracy theorist on a few issues, so I didn't push the scientific research too far in front of him in part for that reason.

Not in every way, but in some ways, perhaps I'm being reminded of family of origin stuff, too.

Between that and my recent post about resentment, maybe I need to dip into another non-AA sobriety forum more for a while. Kind of detox.

Update, July 25, 2020: Out in my apartment swimming pool, I realized that he reminded me of Mel Birge from Clayton High.