Of shoes and ships and sealing wax

[scarlettina]

It's Thursday, but I'm still thinking about last weekend. Last weekend I was in Portland for JayWake, jaylake's pre-mortem wake, the gravity of which was defused somewhat by his recent good news, about which we are all pleased.

The party was strange, raucous, and loving. It was filled with people I know and am enormously fond of. I had a second rolling of the Jay Lake elongated penny made and passed them out throughout the evening. I found myself seated at the head table with Jay, davidlevine, radiantlisa, garyomaha and his partner, and Jersey Girl in Portland, good company all. The seating was a complete surprise, an unexpected honor, and I was pleased to share such a front-row seat to the proceedings. Jay was carried into the event in a coffin (that was weirdly uncomfortable for me--for many of us, I suspect), from which he popped out in a most lively fashion. The food was delicious and there was a lot of it--roast beef, pork, stuffed portabello mushrooms, two kinds of salad, several sides, and several kinds of cheesecake and layer cake for dessert. (I'm sure I'm forgetting other things that were on the menu--there was just so much.) To help defray costs, pins and tee shirts were for sale, which on the one hand felt a little odd to me but, given the size of the party--probably much larger than the planners expected--made sense. I wanted to get a pin and missed my opportunity, alas. There were speeches roasting our GOH pretty thoroughly, including a video from friends down under, and David's most excellent bit on his and Jay's history as supervillain and superhero respectively. I laughed until my eyes teared. I think it's fair to say that Jay had a great time. I did, too.

I'm still processing how I feel about the idea of a pre-mortem wake. When the idea of Jay Wake was first introduced, my immediate reaction was anger and my first thought was "My mourning is my own business. Get out of my process." I know that two of Jay's closest friends chose not to attend the party, and I completely respect their choice. In fact, I wasn't going to go-- until I attended JayCon in June, Jay's annual birthday pizza bash, at which I decided that I didn't really have any choice about it; I had to attend JayWake. It wasn't something I could articulate; I just felt compelled. I had moments of deep discomfort here and there during the evening. At the same time, I found myself happy to be there, enjoying poking fun with my friend. If every now and then you've got to say "What the f*ck," this was certainly the time.

I think that's why, at the end of the evening, when the friend acting as the MC announced that Jay would be available to take pictures in the coffin, I decided I had to do it. It was a more emotionally complex thing for me than it probably appeared. Ooh! Sitting in a coffin; what a romp! No, it was more than that.


Me and Jay in a coffin. We took several pics--less blurry, maybe a little more posed--but this one conveys what's really important here. And that purple velvet was scrumptious. Picture by the kind and patient davidlevine, with thanks. (ETA: I am struck by the parallel in poses between this picture and the icon for this post; very strange....)

Of anything that happened that evening, I think getting into the coffin with Jay and being silly and laughing the way we did was exactly what the evening was about for me (and for him, of course): poking cancer--mortality--in the eye. Defusing the horror. Taking back the joy. Yes, it was also whistling in the dark. But if one can take the terror out of a coffin and what it represents, the rest of it seems manageable, approachable, not so very scary after all. Given my long history with mortality--it's a lifelong relationship, about which I've written before--this was actually a pretty loaded thing for me to do. I know that I've scandalized a couple of friends with the pictures. At the same time, I've been acquainted with death since I was 11. It knocks at my door regularly; it's been knocking with more frequency over the last couple of years, and has taken some of the most important people in my life. If I sit in a coffin with joy and laughter, it has no power over me.

And I think that, in the end, was what this was all about.

Comments

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

A great post and a great picture.

I had complex feelings about the wake -- during it, I was mostly just reacting to things in the moment -- smiling to greet friends, laughing at jokes -- but afterward, for a couple of days, I felt deeply bummed out.

When I was 12, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, and a year later he was gone. It was hard to lose him, but it was even harder that nobody in my family seemed to be very good at dealing with mortality and fear and all of that. It was already painful -- there was nothing to be done about that. But the pain was compounded and magnified a hundredfold by the fact that we all seemed to turn on each other instead of supporting each other.

I hated it. It seemed driven by denial, by a lack of willingness to really confront the inevitability of it all, and cope with that. Everybody has to die, and nearly everybody has to lose somebody they care about through death, but nobody has to be an ass about it.

So Jay hosting his own wake while he's around to enjoy it -- that's exactly the kind of thing that I think we ought to do, if we feel so moved. Take something really bad and try to use it to make people happy in spite of everything.

But the pain is still there, isn't it?

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

But the pain is still there, isn't it?

Yep. It's lessened for me, at least right now, by being part of a community and all of us managing it together. Inside my own head? Well, I guess I'm back to "My mourning is my own business"--and that's another subject for another post at some point, I suspect.