Saturday, February 27, 2016

Winter in Winnipeg part 2

I went with Lily to the funeral home yesterday. They had to deal with all of the last minute issues for the burial and memorial service. Her family already picked a casket, decided on when and where to have the memorial service, open casket or closed. It is amazing how many decisions you have to make when someone dies. Fortunately, her father already had a place to be buried. I was not around to add my two cents to anything. I was purely there to be on Lily's side, no matter what.

The burial is later this afternoon. After the burial, they are having a memorial service. Lily wants me to go to both, so I am going. She is much closer to her family than I am to mine, but she was closest with her father. She has old friends in Winnipeg, but they all gradually faded out of touch the way people do when you move to the other side of the world. I can understand that completely. I used to have friends in Minnesota who would take a bullet for me. Now, we sometimes forget to send e-mail on birthdays. Lily and I are basically sisters. Not going with her was never an option.

I also got a chance to look around the hotel. Airports are not generally in the most exciting neighborhoods, but there is a Tim Hortons around the corner. Tim Hortons is no Krispy Kreme, but they are better than anything we have in Hong Kong. There are several strip malls nearby and at least one indoor shopping mall, but I am not here to go shopping. That is something we have more than enough of in Hong Kong.

It is just after 3 o'clock in the morning right now. I woke up an hour ago. I am still adjusting to the time difference. It is almost dinner time in Hong Kong, so my body wants to be awake. As soon as I shift to Winnipeg time, it will probably be time to go home.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, you actually went over there. That's great of you to do this. That's interesting what you said about friends drifting away after you have been living overseas for a while. When I lived overseas, I experienced a little bit of that. But, almost all of my really good friends, still stayed really good friends even during the number of years I was away. But, then again, I have always only had a small number of really good friends to begin with, so I guess I am not really counting any pretty OK / so-so friends. Of the pretty OK / so-so friends, yes, several did in fact slowly stop contacting me and staying in touch while I was away. But, I am rambling here... It's great that you have gone out of your way to be there for your friend.

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  2. I think now, with cell phones and everything online, it's probably easier to keep friendships when you move away. When I left, I was barely online. All of my friends were people I saw and spoke with offline. We never see each other now, obviously. Now, everything's online.

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