Routine--Like Ritual, but Without the Praying

When my alarm went off at 5:30, I was already awake, listening to the dog snore and trying to understand why the tiny cat would feel the need to poke me repeatedly with one claw. I thought about staying home and how much I just wanted to never move from my bed. I mean, I feel sorry for myself with the best of them. I give myself over to despair like a pro. And I was totally feeling like this would be another fine day to let slip by. But I got up, like usual, and I went to the bathroom, like I always do, and I came downstairs and put on the big orange jacket and hooked the dog's collar and opened the door and stepped outside, like I do every weekday morning. Don't get me wrong. I still felt like shit about the whole thing. But I was thinking of funerals (yes, still) and how nice it is that they're very similar. Once you know the funeral service, it never changes. You just go into the church and kind of turn the autopilot on. It's kind of a respite from the newness of your grief, because it gives you something old and familiar to do. And that's what my normal day is--old and familiar. So, I put one foot in front of the other and I walked around my neighborhood and I came home and I ate breakfast and that's the plan, to just do some normal shit. If I still feel bad after work, then I can go to bed. Meanwhile, I was going to tell you guys that the whole weekend was not all fat people talking bad about how fat other fat people had gotten. There was actually a lot of really nice stuff, like watching the littlest nephew dance at the wedding and realizing that his "dancing" was just doing baseball slides with fancy hand movements. Or like coming back to the hotel and looking in the whirlpool and seeing the Butcher and the littlest nephew--just their heads, bobbing right at the surface of the water. Or like watching the littlest nephew walking right up to people, sticking out his hand and saying "Hello, my name is [littlest nephew]." The bride was beautiful. She had a strapless off-white gown with a kind of corset tie doohicky up the back. The food was good, the weather was nice, and it was really good to see everyone and spend time with them, even if I'm not yet sure how to assimilate everything.