Fun(eral) Home

After reading merely the first few chapters, I'm struck with the immense volume of issues contained within the novel.  It has topics reaching from death, betrayal via affairs, homosexuality, and a distinctly facsimile replication of how a family 'should be.'

And while the plethora of topics all beg to be discussed, I find myself most drawn towards the issue of death.  (I suppose that makes me a morbid person?)  But I think the reason is many fold.  For one, being interested in the science of medicine is rather similar to the undertaker's profession.  Pre-med training requires working with a cadaver (body donated to science) so the thought of living with a parent in that vocation is intriguing to me.  Especially because of the upbringing of the author, there seems to be a disconnect from most usual emotional reactions.  "It could be argued that death is inherently absurd, and that grinning is not necessarily an appropriate response." (47)

Flamingos might seem to have a strange relation to death but it seems an obvious connection to me.
http://melissacartercreations.com/gpage8.html

I know I've had my own strange reaction to death but it wasn't this morbid grinning.  When my grandfather died, I was in 4th grade.  I remember flying up to Missouri for the funeral around christmastime.  They had a huge christmas tree set up next to the casket in the church and my brother and I wandered over there to view the ornaments.  Eventually we got bored of this and started a game of tag.  In retrospect, chasing each other around the coffin of our deceased family member shows incredibly bad social awareness.  But on the other hand, why must death be such a horrendous thing to be feared?  We all know we're bound to die sooner or later.  It's what happens to all living organisms.  I remember this one woman at my church always said she wanted a party instead of a funeral.  And when she died, that's exactly what we did.  We had a flamingo-themed celebration of life.  I remember my mom explaining it to me but I was too small to understand the bigger implications until I got older.  So I really do hold this intrinsic belief that we should celebrate the time we spend here.

The author's father had a granite obelisk as a gravestone which seems
beyond appropriate for his life choices.
http://www.texemarrs.com/032009/obsessed_with_sex.htm

But there's another response to death I'd like to bring up- that of the slow climax building up to the final tragedy.  In the author's case, "Dad's death was not a new catastrophe but an old one that had been unfolding very slowly for a long time." (83)  But this can be true of other situations as well.  Specifically I'm speaking of wasting away because of disease.  I think that is one example where celebrating the beauty of life becomes much, much harder.  Because what's beautiful about slowly falling apart?  I'm really having trouble phrasing this correctly, probably because I'm dealing with this issue right now.  Over winter break, my family found out my Grandma has cancer and not of the curable variety. Since then, it's been a careful dance of side-stepping what I can.  I know it sounds like I'm shirking my familial duty but I'm not sure how to handle what's going on.  My mom continues to be frank with me and what to expect in the near future and that makes me feel too logical and lacking in emotion.  But then when I talked to dad (whose mother is my Grandma), he was just incredulous that he might never see her again. It's rather unusual to hear my dad be so direct about his emotions.  He's the engineer and the one who usually just sees the world as a conglomeration of facts.  So when I talked to him, I didn't know how to soothe or comfort or be of any help at all.  And the whole situation puts my own parents mortality into question.  I've always known I have relatively old parents but I never linked that to length of time span.  And frankly, that train of thought paralyzes me with fear.  So while I'm highly engaged in reading Fun Home, I'm having trouble putting my own emotions about real life into context.