We just got back about an hour ago and have begun, at last, to decompress.

Just before heading out to the service, I was reading about panicked, desperate coroners and funeral directors in NYC, and about the hundreds of thousands of families in China facing this week designated by millennia-old tradition to tend to the graves of one's ancestors and honor their memory, and how lost these families are with not only no graves but no bodies, no ashes and no likelihood of ever knowing where exactly their beloveds have gone. All our mourning rituals that make sense of death and grief and help us to heal have been upended. And in a weird way my family and others in the Bay Area are bitterly privileged because at least we can have funerals and burials--even with all these horrible, surreal restrictions, we have more space for the rituals of sorrow than so many others.

But still. 13 people (there were going to be 14, but one--who is facing an entirely different catastrophic illness--didn't show, and even at 13 we had to spread out extra far so the county health dept. couldn't watch the livestream of the service and catch us going over the 10 person limit), 10+ feet apart, all with complicated relationships with my father and each of us gasping and crying at different moments, with everyone else unable to do anything but look and try to send psychic hugs with the power of our minds because the one thing we all wanted to do most, clutch and embrace and cry together, was the one thing we couldn't do.

We were weirdly blessed in various ways--the Orthodox priest who'd baptized both my younger brothers, who is undergoing cancer treatments himself, came to be part of this because he felt he couldn't not. (Random facts: (1) Our mom is one of his favorite humans on the planet and every time he sees her he asks her when she's going to convert and every time he sees me--except today--he wraps me in a hug and tells me to pass it along to my mom; (2) He is George Stephanopoulos's godfather, because the Orthodox community in the US is just exactly that small; (3) Despite all that, his homily was kind of rote and sentimental and cringey, and everyone in the family preferred the homily by the other priest, whose homily during our uncle's funeral a month and a half earlier we'd all loathed. Something has changed him profoundly in the last 6 weeks, and we all felt it to our bones--very likely the terrible fact that his sister just died on Wednesday, in Minneapolis, and he cannot be there for her burial and is broken open by that loss in a way he couldn't have imagined six weeks earlier.) And the choir mistress, a second-generation liturgical music specialist who does this for a living and usually charges heavily for her services, volunteered her vocal gifts today out of love for our father.

It was oddly comforting to have Hec there--this church is one of the two our parents were married in, the one both brothers and I were baptized in, the place where I first experienced any sense of numinous wonder. I don't think I will ever, EVER return to the Orthodox faith, but something of it is in my bones, and this particular church was designed with more care and love and attention to creating a space in which to be meditative and attentive than any other I've ever been in. He'd never before been to any service there; sharing this grief in this specific space, with all its personal weight, with him felt as intimate as anything we've experienced in the course of our marriage.

The interior of the church is domed, covered in copper panels, with a gigantic painted icon the adult Christ in the center at the apex of the arc and painted icons of the twelve Apostles in a circle around him. In a second arc, connecting that circle of Apostles with the altar and the floor on which the rest of us sit and stand, is a twice-life-sized icon of Mary and the Babe, looking out serenely upon the congregation. In the Greek church she is called the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the human bridge between eternity and mortality. Just to the (continued...)

( continues...) side of the altar is another icon of the two of them, but in this one she is looking at the baby like every emotionally healthy mother looks at every infant, and he is intent upon her as every healthily bonded infant is upon its mother, one hand reaching up under her veil to clutch at a handful of her hair just like every healthily bonded infant's hand.

The two icons, the serenely outward-focused and the devouringly loving one; the metallic ceiling against which the choir mistress's voice arcs and soars; the windows all around (the building is a vast circle, and all the windows are lined in blue glass, giving everything a dreamy underwater quality); the air heavy with incense that smells like no other incense in the world.

And the 13 of us, widely spaced into our tiny family units--Matilda and Hec clutching me and both of us clutching Matilda to support each other through the insupportable; my aunt, who just buried her husband and is now burying her baby brother, and her daughter; another highly problematic cousin and his spouse, who shrugged off all their issues when this came crashing in; my father's partner, weeping by herself because none of us were allowed to touch her and the only person by whose side she could have safely been was in that stainless steel box; my middle brother, all alone at the end of our pew; another cousin to our left, and his ex-wife, whom my dad had always treated like family no matter what her legal status, on the right. The office manager who thought of him as a second father. The old friend from decades back. And no one else in all the world.

Oh, JZ, all my love to you.

So much love, JZ

Oh, JZ, I am so sorry for all you're going through right now. The way you describe the church and the service and everyone present, so lovingly and attentively -- it makes me feel like I was there too, looking out through those sea glass windows. I hope you feel the love of all those who couldn't be there with you. ♥ ♥ ♥

sharing this grief in this specific space, with all its personal weight, with him felt as intimate as anything we've experienced in the course of our marriage.

Grief is such a powerful, raw emotion.

I'm glad for the fact that your family was able include those who in many families would be excluded. My Mom attended my Dad's memorial service. Families get complicated but when those who have loved are welcome, I think it makes everyone stronger. Especially in these fraught times.

Please be gentle with yourself. It's a rough world.

Oh JZ, all my love and sympathy to you. Funerals are so weird, something so sad yet full of love and drawing everyone (metaphorically) closer.

What a beautiful place, thanks for sharing pictures and descriptions. Even as reduced as it was, the ceremony was dignified and gracious, and everything your father was due in these horrible circumstances.

JZ, your beautiful description of the cathedral made me feel like I was there.

And the 13 of us, widely spaced into our tiny family units--Matilda and Hec clutching me and both of us clutching Matilda to support each other through the insupportable; my aunt, who just buried her husband and is now burying her baby brother, and her daughter; another highly problematic cousin and his spouse, who shrugged off all their issues when this came crashing in; my father's partner, weeping by herself because none of us were allowed to touch her and the only person by whose side she could have safely been was in that stainless steel box; my middle brother, all alone at the end of our pew; another cousin to our left, and his ex-wife, whom my dad had always treated like family no matter what her legal status, on the right. The office manager who thought of him as a second father. The old friend from decades back. And no one else in all the world.

This is the extravagant cruelty of it all. The separation is where this disease unnecessarily runs up the score. I'm grateful, at least, that you, Matilda, and Hec could cling together.

Oh, JZ. My heart goes out to you, to David, Matilda, and the rest of the family. {{}}