No one notices the pianist until she makes a mistake

During one of the early weeks after I was called as the secretary in young women, I was listening to the young women sing our one verse, a cappella hymn. I'm sure it was a joyous noise for the Lord to listen to, if not the room at large (seriously - try and sing with young girls. Their voices make noises that older voices just can't. It's difficult at best.)

I had the best idea I've had in a long time. Or maybe it was the worst. Being in a new ward meant that we we singing sacrament hymns to the piano, because most of our organists lived in the section of the ward that didn't stay with us. It also meant that Nicole, the lady who was playing the piano, learned how to play the organ in two weeks. In our young women class, every now and then one of the girls would volunteer to play top hand, but they hadn't practiced, and with them doing everything in the meeting (conducting, praying, leading the music, starting the YW theme, etc.) I didn't think it was fair to ask a girl to play off the cuff, without having time to practice. Inspired by Nicole, I decided that I should pick a hymn each week and learn the top hand to play for the girls. I ran my idea past the young women president and she gave me approval.

I became the unoffical young women pianist (snort!)

So here I am, three months later. I've decided it's the silver lining for my calling. I can't tell you how nervous I get when I play. Most of the time, even if I have practiced playing both hands, I can't manage the stress of playing both hands while people are singing along. But I'm learning and improving so much. I don't think it's anything I've done to get better; I think it's just a blessing that I'm getting since I'm playing for the girls. But whatever the source of my improvement, I'll take it.

Years ago, my BFF Melanie gave me a book filled with simplified Christmas music. Each year since, I've tried to play O Holy Night, with varying degrees of success. This year was the first year I've been able to get through the whole song with two hands. It makes me so happy! I also practiced We Three Kings (a much easier song) and was able to get through it with two hands most of the time. And for church, I played Silent Night, Angels We Have Heard on High, and Joy to the World.

It makes me happy. I feel silly, putting myself forward each week as the pianist. Because really, no one at church really pays attention to the pianist unless they make a mistake - which I do frequently. I've convinced myself that the girls roll their eyes at my playing, which probably isn't true, but I think it every time I miss a note. But I keep playing because I want to learn. I want this little hobby that makes me happy.

Christmas 2014

I love, love Christmas. This was a great year. A few things I want to remember:

• Watching Elf (I love Buddy the Elf, he makes everyone feel special and has no guile or ill-will towards anyone. I wish I could be more like him.) while I made our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of french dip sandwiches, brown rice, and clam dip. Ben even said, "Great dinner, Mom," as he got up from the table. A true Christmas miracle.
• Laughing with Shane's dad and grandma on Christmas Eve as we visited in her kitchen. I didn't ever think we would have Christmases like that again. I'm so grateful.This picture is priceless.

• Visiting the mall, just because, on Christmas Eve day. I love to be out in the hustle and bustle, especially when I know I'm only there for fun, not for necessity. We found a shirt for Shane to wear on Christmas (because he likes to wash his clothes before he wears them, so he rarely has a Christmas shirt.) We attempted to cash in on some sub-$2 gas at Costco, but the line was insane.
• Watching Shane play with his toy: a Keurig 2.0 coffee maker that his friend gave him for Christmas. 
• Had a Coke (or two or three) for the first time since Halloween.
• Ben's excitement when he saw his Christmas presents. He jumped for joy on more than one present. He didn't sleep at all Christmas Eve, and tried to get up at 1, 3:30, and 4:45, before succeeding at 6am. Yawn.
  
• Observing Thomas. He understands Christmas now. But he still gets excited, and is a good kid about not letting on about the gig. He got one of his big presents early - like October early, so it I kept wondering if he was sad, or felt disappointed. But he rallied and had a great Christmas. I still remember Christmas when I was in 8th grade - I got a brown leather jacket that I can still smell, and some green stretchy pants and a big sweatshirt - but what I wanted was a Nintendo so I could play Mario Brothers like my friend Amber. I still remember how sad I was but trying to not let on. Christmas is hard when you grow up.

• Eating breakfast with Shane's mom and stepdad.

• Driving to my mom's in a beautiful snowstorm.
• Having a nice, teary, one-sided conversation  with my dad in the quiet of his backyard. The snow was falling so softly on the trees. He would have loved the way they looked. I could feel him right there. I'm glad he had some time on Christmas, and that I found a quiet place to feel him.

• Driving home in the second worst Christmas Day storm we have ever weathered.
• Taking silly bow pictures with my sisters. I love them!

• Admiring the beautiful Nativity set my mom gave us.
• Thinking about the fact that next Christmas, it could all be so very, very different. My mom is having a pretty serious and complex back surgery in January, and things might have to change. I feel so lucky to have spent all my Christmases (except for one!) in my mom's home, with my family. I love them all so much.
• Sitting with most of the boy crowd in the living room during dinner at my mom's. All my boys, Amy's sons and husband, and my oldest nephew Zack, and my great nephews all chatted together over the traditional ham, potatoes, green bean casserole, Brussels spouts casserole, and homemade rolls.
• Embarrassing Thomas with an inappropriate conversation with half of the family. It's so fun to embarrass teenagers. Just mention their parent's having sex and they lose all composure.I love it. And my older sister is really good at it.
• Being zen about it all. I didn't let anything get to me (or I tried really, really hard.) I didn't even rush everyone out the door the way I usually do. Or fussed about what was going on in the kitchen. It's true that the cat throwing up noises that Ben made (nonstop!) in the car almost put me over the edge, as did the hustle and bustle before dinner, but I did it. Oooommmm.

• Wearing the running skirt, Deathly Hallows necklace, and slippers Shane bought me all morning. I've asked for slippers for years and years and he finally bought me some. The running skirt I had him buy in September when they were on sale, and the Deathly Hallows pendant was a wild card that I threw at him at the last minute after I realized how much I was envying Amy's. (Every time I think of it I think Amy's story about library patron who saw hers. Amy, you should put the quote in the comments so I can get it right!)
• Perfecting the Christmas morning pull-apart rolls, which have been slightly undercooked for years and years until I realized that you have to put them in the pantry, instead of the fridge, overnight. Thanks, Pinterest!

Merry Christmas! I hope yours was lovely.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: book review and thoughts about death

Two summers ago, I went to my friend Sheila's funeral and burial. Since Sheila had been cremated, there was no casket. Instead, most of her ashes were concealed in an urn that was placed inside the burial vault while the mourners looked on.

It was sort of shocking to me to watch her urn being put in the ground in front of me. In my experience, the burial of the remains was always performed behind the scenes, after the dedicatory prayer, and out of the sight of loved ones. I thought a lot about this event, and the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated it. Sheila's young daughters, who would certainly come to visit in the future, would know exactly what was underneath the beautiful headstone that marked Sheila's remains. They weren't preserved to look "natural" or "lifelike." They were simply non-scary, non-threatening ashes, remains of a lovely life cut too short. They would never wonder if she still looked the same as when the casket lid was shut (as I often do when I visit my dad's grave site.)

The shock became sort of comforting as I thought about it. The obviousness of the events took wonder about a dead body below the ground out of the equation. No dead body preserved with chemicals in a cement vault in a metallic casket, all for the mourner's comfort and the cemetery's landscaping convenience, paid for at a premium price, with the feeling that anything less than the best makes you cheap. (Sidenote: I was called "cheap" in conversation just this week about this topic. The exact words were "you are too cheap to be embalmed." Um, okay. I guess I am. Because yes, I not only don't like the thought of my dead body being filled with chemicals, I also don't like my loved ones paying a large sum for it. I'll own that, but not in the way it was said.)

Now, I'm not really 100% sold on cremation. But I also don't oppose it in quite the way I did when I was younger. The culture I live in seems to believe in the traditional funeral establishment. But I don't count myself as one of the believers. Sheila's funeral was simply another step in my own (morbid) journey of how I've come to think about my own death (a long, long time in the future, thankyouverymuch.) I decided years ago to not be embalmed. I've also decided to have a green burial (more on this later in the post.) I don't judge others for their desires for their own burial, but those are my current plans for that future event.

Which brings me to the book I've been reading: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & other lessons from the Crematory, by Caitlin Doughty.  It is possibly one of the best autobiographical memoirs I have ever read. Told in first person, Caitlin tells of how she became obsessed and morbidly afraid of death as a child, which led to her first job in a funeral home, pushing the big red button on the crematorium for people from all walks of life.  She also has a blog and a website, www.orderofthegooddeath.com

I cannot say enough good things about this book. Caitlin talks very openly about our society's lack of death rituals, especially as most people become increasingly less involved in religion. Most of us are afraid of dead bodies, convinced that they will give us diseases, that we don't have any rights to the deceased's body after death, that we cannot transport them on our own or keep them longer than a few moments after they have passed from life to death. Our society likes to have death be behind closed doors. We are are secluded from death because it reminds us that we will die, and we don't like to be reminded.

I loved this book. I loved how she tackled the societal beliefs and norms that we have about death. Reading about the lack of regard many people have for their dead made me sad that I didn't participate in more of my own father's burial. I wish I hadn't let fear keep me from helping to dress him. I know I am a daughter, and that it would be weird to dress my father. But I wish I had. Even just his outer clothing. What I dislike about my lack of involvement is that it came from fear. Fear of my dad's scary dead body. I know that my sister participated in the dressing of one of her close relatives, and that she felt a great amount of peace from it. I regret not doing something similar for my dad. I won't let that fear impede me in the future.

If I thought I had strong beliefs about what I wanted to happen to my own body after death before reading it, they are even stronger now. Even though it sounds weird and new-agey, I think a home funeral would be very special to have or attend for a loved one. When I die, I don't want my family to be afraid of my body. (Nor do want them to keep it in the back bedroom as it waits for resurrection.) I want some sort of middle ground type of event to mark my passing. This passage perfectly describes my feelings for my body:

The way to break the cycle and avoid embalming, the casket, the heavy vault, is something called green, or natural, burial. It is only available in certain cemeteries, but its popularity is growing as society continues to demand it....The body goes straight into the ground, in a simple biodegradable shroud, with a rock to mark the location. It zips merrily through decomposition, shooting its atoms back into the universe to create new life. Not only is natural burial by far the most ecologically sound way to perish, it doubles down on the fear of fragmentation and loss of control. Making the choice to be naturally buried says "Not only am I aware that I'm a helpless, fragmented mass of organic matter, I celebrate it. Vive la decay!"

And another good sentence or two:

I understood I had been given my atoms, the ones that made up my heart and toenails and kidneys and brain, on a kind of universal loan program. The time would come when I would have to give the atoms back, and I didn't want to attempt to hold on to them through the chemical preservation of my future corpse.

I know, I know. It's morbid. But it's inevitable, and I don't want to pretend my own death (or the death of my loved ones, as much as I don't want it) won't happen (in a really, really long time.) I don't want to pretend I will always be young. I want to embrace the process of life, that leads, you know, to aging and eventual decomposition. It will happen whether I fear it or not. It feels brave. It feels empowered.

Check out Caitlyn's website. Read her book. It's disturbing, but I think we need to be a little disturbed. I think we need reminders of our mortality. We need to make decisions about our own deaths.