“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This morning I was dressed to go to Joe Bumbalo’s funeral by 9:15. I didn’t feel like hanging around the house until 9:45 — the service was at 10:00 — so I told Margaret Bumbalo I’d run down to the hospital to see Jane first, then walk over. Jane was better, surprised to see me, trying to decide whether to go to hydro [she didn’t].

(I was one of six honorary pallbearers. We stood outside after the service, three in a row facing each other on the porch, while six others carried Joe’s casket between us and down the steps to the hearse.

(I found the whole funeral experience quite interesting, though I understood little of what was going on. A priest gave a short talk at the funeral home, leading it off, maybe for shock value, by telling us that sooner or later every one of us would experience the same thing Joe Bumbalo had. The room was very impressive, with its beamed ceiling. I thought the timeless quality, of light and so forth, inside the large room where the casket lay was more than a little symbolic in itself, isolated as the room was from the apparent time of day, night, or season.

(The priest in charge — there were three of them — said that Joe had planned much of the service himself, and that Joe had asked him: “Why are the good ones taken?” The priest enlarged the question to: “Why is anyone taken?”

(The service wasn’t as long as I’d thought it might be, though, and we were on our way to the cemetery shortly before noon, winding through the quiet tree-lined side streets. The day had turned hot and bright and humid — a beautiful day to be alive, actually, though I’d agreed with the priests when each of them said that Joe was in an even better place now.