What they call normal

Mom's funeral was on Friday, and now I'm back home. Strangely enough, I feel like a guest in my own house, not quite comfortable with spreading out my stuff and pouring the last of the milk in my coffee. I told Andy to enjoy the relative order of things, because I don't think it will last long.
Leaving my dad was hard, but after we cluttered around the house in shock and awe for the past week or so, it was time to go through the motions of making things normal again. Right.

I'm knitting, and I've got quite a few pictures lined up, but I'm not quite up to being THAT normal just yet. All in due course.


Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, --
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave,
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Edna St. Vincent Millay