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04/17/2004 Archived Entry: "Good-bye Jordan"

(Note: This is a guest post by Jack) Yesterday was tiring, emotionally draining and difficult. We got through it, albeit with many tears.

The funeral went fine. I played guitar softly in the small chapel during the viewing time. The song I played was one of my own called 'There is a Place Where it's Always Summer.' (The last time I performed that song in public was many years ago, at the funeral of a nephew that also died of SIDS.) The service followed, with the pastor giving a fine sermon. It was typically Baptist, filled with talk about how Jordan is in a far better place because he died without sin, and anyone who is Christian will be there with him someday because Jesus saved them from their sins and, oh by the way, if you aren't Christian you should become one so you can go there too. It was actually rather low key, but heartfelt. He then asked if anyone there had anything to say.

I did.

I talked about grief. I said that I did not grieve for Jordan really; instead I grieved for the walks he and I would never take in the forest. For the fishing trips we would never go on. For the nights we would never spend in the backyard with a telescope. So I wasn't grieving for Jordan so much as I was grieving for myself, for that fact I could never get to know him now. And I thought everyone else there was doing the same thing, but that is OK. Jordan isn't here any more, and it is perfectly appropriate for us to grieve for the loss of the child, the adolescent and the man we would never get to meet. To grieve selfishly. I don't know how well it went over with the crowd, or even if they heard what I was saying in the same way as I meant it.

Afterwards many of those attending followed Anita and me to my sister's house for a lunch of pizza and cold cuts. It was a somewhat larger crowd than I had expected, many were friends and family of Jordan's father and some people from a ministry in Seattle that had worked with my daughter were there. So it was a pretty motley crowd; with my family, my daughters and my ex-wife, some clean-cut young people and social workers and a bunch of kids with multiple piercings. I provided some unintentional comic relief by slipping on a wheelchair ramp in the back yard and going backwards ass over teakettle. My arm and shoulder still hurt this morning.

Finally everyone except my family left. And, finally, Anita and I left ourselves. Going back up to Seattle to attend the evening festivities at the Nebula awards, where I found something strange had happened; I had used up all my sadness. Like it was a well that I had pumped dry and would have to now wait for it to refill. I could feel melancholy. I could even laugh and make small jokes. But I couldn't feel sad right then. And there, surrounded by my friends and by similar thinking strangers I realized that this, fandom, was also my family, and in some ways it was a better family for how I felt right then: supportive and non-judgmental.

It has been a bad week, but it turned better, and I can place just exactly the moment when that happened. While we were driving up I-5 past Sea-Tac Anita and I saw a brilliant double rainbow. And then, just as we came into view of the Seattle skyline the sky cleared and the rain stopped. I commented that, it was too bad I didn't believe in signs and portents because this was a fine one. And, indeed, it was...

Posted by jmo @ 04/20/2004 06:26 AM PST

I saw that rainbow too. We've had several of them in Seatac over the last couple of days.

Posted by tyd @ 04/19/2004 05:32 PM PST

I spoke with you both over the weekend, but I'm just catching up on reading these posts now. I think this is a very sweet story, I really like the sight of the double rainbow and the clearing sky. Yeah!

Posted by Luke @ 04/19/2004 07:02 AM PST