“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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 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.

(Perhaps 20–25 people were at graveside, compared to the much larger group at the church. The priests spoke briefly. They were perfectly sincere people, and I found it arresting to listen to them as they spoke of Jesus Christ, the afterlife, and so forth, with such utter sincerity and conviction. Their commitment was for life, I thought, and so was bound to be different than most other people’s. I wondered how often they went through roughly the same procedures with the dead, and speculated about how their sincerity and love must have stood them in good stead at such often-repeated times. For each time, they had to ring true to those left behind, adding those necessary personal touches, and references and little stories, to match the personal history of the newly deceased.

(I’d told her several times in recent days that I thought her right knee was draining considerably less as a rule, and that several other scabs on her body were showing signs of clearing up. The swelling on her left shoulder blade varies considerably in size from day to day.