A tale of two funerals...

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Today, in the Montreal area, inside a Polish Church (at the request of her Polish grand-mother - the whole family bears the name of Anastasia's Portuguese grand-father so the wife had to have the last word, as wives usually do...) the gone-too-fast Anastasia De Sousa had her funeral ceremony - "a missa do corpo presente" as her ancestors on her grand-daddy's side would have said.

Six months ago, almost to the day, I personally arranged for the exact same thing - uma missa do corpo presente - for my saintly father. There were less people present for a variety of reasons, which are: I did not invite everyone. Some of those that I did invite lived too far away and could not make the trip, for HEALTH reasons too... I did not want certain people there - even though they were locals and could have been there in a heartbeat. (I didn't want them there in spirit, so... Forget about the heartbeat! The one I cared about had stopped on March 28th...)

Also, and chiefly, the reason why there were less people there than there were at the Polish Church was the sensationalism of the event, though a sad and tragic event. Anastasia was too young to die - she wasn't even ill. By all means, she would still be very much alive and thriving, if it had not been for the nine bullets she took from a mentally-disturbed misfit named Kimveer Gill. Anastasia's life was cut short for all the wrong reasons (or even worse - no reason at all) and in a most horrific and violent way. She was the only one from the wounded at Dawson College to die from her bullet wounds, so far and as far as I know anyway (at least one injured person remains in a coma, in some intensive care unit, in a Montreal hospital... That person is listed as being in critical condition...)

My father was in an intensive care unit too, last March - because of a sudden turn for the worse in his health condition. I see some of the medical staff with the same eyes that many of Anastasia's friends and family might look at Kimveer Gill; yes, I see them as assassins too, only different types of assassins - for it is all legally done. They kill not with bullets but with pellets (they call them pills) either over or underadministered, sometimes given to the patient too early or too late, when they can no longer prevent the worst-case scenario from occurring... Different types, hence - same results. A doctor will kill far more than any Kimveer Gills ever will. And then, there are others I could blame for father's health taking such a turn for the worse - but I cannot prove it, so...

That would be the pits though - to seek out the same medical establishment I loathe in order to find evidence that father's health deteriorated because of outside factors... Other than their own poorly rendered medical treatments that is! Trading one scapegoat for another, especially via a temporary alliance with the one I can readily incriminate or, at least, blame already, is simply not my idea of "justice"... I will, therefore, leave it ALL in the hands of GOD.

Which is what the local De Sousa family is doing too. Their daughter's murderer is dead already -the only other fatality, for now, in the shooting spree- and so, being such people of faith as they are, they will do likewise, I am sure. It may hurt them more because she was only starting her life - at 18 years of age, Anastasia had just entered Dawson College. She would be shot dead within days there. That was not what she had envisioned for her future, or she would have never enrolled there. Maybe she should have taken a sabbatical (so to speak), like I did between college and university. Still, I was present, a mere few feet away even, from the site where the previous such tragedy occurred - the Polytechnique massacre, in the 1990s. The misfit miscreant there had shot dead more than one victim before HE was stopped. Who knows - maybe I could have caught a stray bullet myself? One is never safer, no matter what we do - we are only safe if God decides that we will be. And, if our hour has come, that is it - forget about safety then. You will be safe soon enough - in God's Domain!

The funerals then - both had, despite all the differences enumerated here, one striking thing in common: the rain. Anastasia's had many people coming who did not even know her -the media was there, her school's director (did the doctor come to my dad's funeral? No! The hospital's director? Ha! I would have not wanted them there either..)- and all who came, brought their umbrellas. Rain in a funeral seems appropriate - like the heavens are crying with us. But that is not it, at all.

The rain is nothing less than blessings - encouragement from the Most High for those who stay... And blessings for the soul that has departed too! Maybe even blessings from that soul as well, which is now in The Light and can, therefore, dispense these to his or her loved ones left behind. The rainbow that follows, as the sunshine, are reflective of God telling us that all is as He Planned - and everything will be all right. Reflective, too, that those who left us are with Him - in The Light! Both funerals saw the exact same thing happen - rain, more rain, heavy rain even, at the moment of the laying of the coffin into that six-foot deep hole in the ground... And then, as soon as the crowd has dispersed and it is all over and done with, the rain ceases, the skies clear and the sun shines in!

Anastasia is in a good place now (more than I can say for other people, also in Canada, somewhere, who bear her last name but have no relation at all to her - when THEY die...)
My father is in a good place too (likewise, I cannot vouch for all who bear his last name either - but I am hopeful he will put in a good word for me - please dad!)

And we, who remain, have to carry on now...
Keep their memory alive as we keep on working on our own gem in the rough, perfecting it... Those gems being OUR SOULS...
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