Everybody had lots of fun the day of the funeral. It was, as my father would call it in the days and months after, ‘A damn good sendoff.’
The 30th of December was unusually bright, creating a stark black shadow on a solitary pile of snow that was still intact. Just over 100 people had congregated in St. Hugo’s Catholic Church, a palatial glass building with unusually geometric architecture, for the aforementioned funeral. The service itself was stunning,  the rare winter sun shining through the kaleidoscopic glass, the wails of bagpipes fading away as the musicians marched off, and a young woman’s determination not to cry while reading the eulogy. After the church, the inner family met at the home of the deceased’s parents.
         The house was twice as crowded as usual, due to two different sides of the family--the family of my aunt, who had married my father’s brother, and our family--meeting all together for the first time since my aunt and uncle’s wedding, over 30 years before. I watched the somber mood slowly leaching all color from the room as I felt what we all did in that moment: That no extra people or entire extended families or the elephant in the corner could fill the house’s echoing abyss. My father fished out a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey from a cabinet, hinting that it was grownup time. As I gravitated towards the edge of the room, I saw my tough uncle, still one of the strongest men I know, crying.
His voice shook while he vividly described how he had found the room and the blood and the note and the— the what, I’ll never know. My father all but evacuated me. And so I remained away from what I considered my family, awkwardly trying to entertain two young second cousins I had never met before.
And so it went, time passing as slowly as possible, until a terrible cacophony captured our attention. The floor above us shook, screeches, yells, and wails clashed, and rushing up the stairs it seemed clear that the elephant in the corner had stampeded into the spotlight. As we neared the door, the volume grew even more painful to the ears, but it also blended slowly into music and lyrics. Everybody was belting their hearts out, the songs varying from anthemic oldies to modern pop music. Strangers danced with strangers who had loved the same person they had, and once I had halted the lump forming in my throat, I opened my mouth as well.
It was a situation that grows in beauty with context. As we were swallowed by the ocean of sound, we didn’t care what the neighbors would think, we didn’t care what anyone thought. We sang until our voices were hoarse, then sang some more. We sang with our memories, rather than regrets, as his namesake played the piano with fervor, and we tried to sing, as he had loved to. We sang, and our two families became one.