here's a nice writeup from Gibbs of B87.
BY GIBBS CADIZ
The death itself was a major body blow, but I had no idea the logistics it required would be a burden quite as heavy.
The one thing that sustained me during the first few days, when I had to arrange everything from the casket to the burial ground to the legal paperwork to the funeral mass to getting the rest of my family home, was the support of relatives and friends. Especially friends. I got by with the tremendous, unstinting support of my childhood buddies, those who've stayed behind and built their lives in the province, and who knew my father, were even friends with him.
Specifically, my former seminary classmates, a couple of them priests now, the rest married, who never left my side and took on the extra chores of chasing the required documentation from the hospital to the city hall to the parish office, freeing me to stay by my father's side and receive visitors while I worked the phones frantically to get the rest of the family to surmount the freak floods and rains that repeatedly derailed their travel plans.
continue reading this fine, fine piece of writing over at the B87 blog. lotsa new pix too!...
