The first major thing I did today was to be a pallbearer at my friend’s mom’s funeral. I hate seeing sad people, and funerals are not a place to be if you don’t want to see sad people. I did like meeting my buddy’s relatives and finally seeing his nieces and nephews.

But then I had to go with my mom and sister to the funeral home to arrange my father’s disposition. It was more tiring than I was expecting, even though everything went quite quickly and we had no major disagreements. An example of a disagreement: my mom wanted me to tell my 90-something Uncle Leo to not come from Spokane, and I wanted to suggest to him that he didn’t need to come. (I suggested he not do anything unsafe when I called, and I’m sure he understood what I meant. He’s the smart ex-pharmacist, after all.)

In any case, we’re doing fine, and tomorrow I may tackle cleaning some of my dad’s desk. My ex-girlfriend had some suggestions because she had to clean up her dad’s office as well. (If you’re wondering if we’re still friends, she came by to check on us and see how we were doing today.)

Like my sister said, he went mostly the way she would want to go, fairly peacefully in his sleep, not knowing the worst. I added he went out the way he would want to go, the big drama queen, rolling down the stairs with no pants on. One of the last family images: after I called 911, my mom was cutting my dad’s toenails (that were almost half-an-inch long) as he lay on the living room floor before the paramedics came to take him to the hospital. Don’t worry, we made sure he was comfortable (even using the doll from yesterday’s posting as a pillow) before we started doing nutty things.

And on an official note, the memorial service is on Friday the 20th, at 7PM, at the Oregon Buddhist Temple, 3720 SE 34th Avenue Portland, OR 97202 (just south of Powell Blvd.)