A celebration of life!

Hey, friends! It’s about 10:00p.m. and this’ll be an early post as I’m barely hanging on with this flu. This has been the first legitimate sickness I’ve had in years. I have COVID in April. I didn’t even know I had it. This, on the other hand, has had me bed ridden for two days and with the amount of work I need to finish, that’s an eternity. Fortunately, @guthrie has a teacher-in-service day tomorrow which means I can sleep in. Hopefully I’ll feel well enough to set up here in bed and get through some Immutable Realms content like the interviewing I’m finishing with @gric.

Tonight’s post will be a somber one, but I feel it’s poignant to share. Sadly, we had a death in the family over the weekend. Our family member was in hospice care for a while so it wasn’t a surprise, but of course, it’s nevertheless hard when the time comes. When I got the news, I made arrangements to help anyway that I could and I was asked by other members of the family if I’d be willing to photograph the service. I’ve done this before, actually. It’s a delicate thing to undertake because you’re hoping to capture the love and beauty of the surviving family without showing any of the pain associated with the loss.

What was a new challenge for me was the format of this funeral. It was a Buddhist ceremony, so culturally, there were several nuances I had to be informed of. The women that participated in the ceremony were more or less, nuns for a day and men weren’t suppose to approach them in any way. Although I don’t speak Lao, there was a poetic story being told of the rope that ties the spirit to the world and how the spirit should be lead to the afterlife. Despite the immense pressure of doing this memorandum justice, I’m very happy with the images that captured the moment.

I have no idea how I’m going to feel tomorrow and thus, how much I’ll be able to get done. Ideally, I’ll be well enough that I can get a few hours in at @caffetto but likely, it’ll be spent here wallowing in my feelings. @guthrie is currently downloading Red Dead Redemption so I don’t see a scenario that’ll pull him away from that game to hang out with his dad at a coffee shop. Fortunately, there’s quite a bit I can do even if it is in bed, like writing and editing for the Immutable Realms zine. That’s my priority right now as I’d like to get it out in to the world by next week at the latest. Have a great night.