A Funereal Day

After four years of procrastination on my part, finally, with the encouragement and help of my (and Tom’s) friend Dan, I managed to arrange to have Tom buried.  Today seemed like just the day for this, as it is the fourth anniversary of his death, and the feast of The Transformation, a celebration of which he was particularly fond. 

It was a lovely afternoon as we gathered at the cemetery to celebrate once again Tom’s life and some of his music.  Dan officiated with a service he had prepared - of prayers, some of Tom’s chosen readings, and his settings of the psalm and responses.

My contribution to the day was getting a bit of food together for the funeral meats.  I didn’t get underway until fairly late, and the evening turned out to be rather trying.  I planned to make focaccia - to start it, let it rise the first time, refrigerate the dough, and then get up early and finish baking it.  I did get it mixed up, and it was rising while I stirred up a batch of cookies, when I noticed that, in our unusually warm weather, it was rising much more quickly than I had anticipated.  I popped it in the refrigerator to slow the rising, and continued with my cookie making.  When I next opened the refrigerator – what a shock!  It was twice the size it had been minutes before, and like “the pot that would not stop boiling,” it looked about to take over my refrigerator. 

It's not supposed to look like this!

While I was dealing with this, I heard an uproar on my back porch.  As I went out to look, Tobias rushed past me through the door, running pell mell into the dining room, hiding under the table.  The ruckus seemed to follow him.  It was apparent that he didn’t want me to investigate more closely, but I knew he was up to no good. And I was correct.  He had caught a baby bird, and was playing with it in that horrible way that cats do.  Margaret was so thrilled by this that she had an unfortunate accident, (which I later stepped on) also on the dining room rug. By this time, it was nearly midnight, and I was getting very grumpy. What else can go wrong, I wondered.  Suddenly I heard an ominous high little chirp. A warning that a fire alarm battery is getting low, I realized.  As I was climbing up onto a chair to take the alarm down, I heard the chirp from a different alarm, and realized that I was taking down the wrong one. I stood under the other one until the chirp came again. Not this one, I thought.  It must be the one upstairs.  Those little chirps are like police sirens in that you can hear them, but often can’t tell the direction they are coming from.  Frustration.  Finally, unable to tell which alarm was chirping, I took all three down, and set them on the table, waiting for one to chirp.  Nothing!   What to do? I turned them all off and went to bed – hoping that the house would not burn down during the night. It didn’t, and in the morning, all three alarms seemed to be working well. No doubt one of them will be chirping again soon, as I am sure the fix was very temporary.  

Note Tobias being the genial host.

Note Margaret waiting for a bit of the funeral meats to drop.