Discordant

I went over to sing at the priest's funeral service this morning.

I worked from home; my plan was to use that time as my lunch break; the service ended being longer than I thought, which meant I had to try to work a little longer this afternoon. I'm having a hard time with work lately because I feel like I am the icy hostess fending off hungry diners at a restaurant: Nope, sorry, no service for you sir. We don't have a table(programmer) for you. When? Maybe an hour(three months). No, I know it's been an hour(close to a year since your initial request). In another hour (three months) we MIGHT have a table(programmer) for you.

So, it goes well, as you can imagine.

But I was there this morning and we sang and I sang well (there were a total of four women and two men so it's good I was there....the hymns we did are beautiful, but I felt anxious about getting home to make sure my kids were ok and deal with work things)

The thing I didn't expect about today's mass was the 14 priests officiating. I mean, I expected the Bishop to be there (late...) and all, but not the 14 priests on the altar. Or the 24 OTHER priests in the first 3 rows.

There was one moment that I enjoyed; I did like the song all of those priests sang at the very end. Along the lines of "Thou shalt forever be a priest"... a chant of some sort. Very moving.

Of course when I thought the service was over I went down the spiral staircase intending to slip out the side door... only to see that entire stairway and sidewalk lined with most of the 40 priests. Crap crap crap. No way was I going to walk that gauntlet and have that many holy people (I forgot to mention the two nuns) examine the state of my soul all at once (they have x ray vision or something to spot a sinner, don't they??)

I ducked to the other side JUST before they brought the casket out of the center aisle. I managed to stop and stand in what I hoped was a respectful manner just outside the door of the church I was heading toward. Gah. At least I was dressed nicely in black slacks and not the tshirt and jeans I wore yesterday (no one sees us in the choir loft)

Finally he was gone and I made my getaway.... whew.

Don't know why my brain wasn't working around this event, (Expect family members. Expect other priests to attend) or why the open casket STILL made me want to run away in terror. It's not like I haven't seen too many open caskets lately. Also don't know why I'm beating myself up about my peculiar reaction to this all. Going to try to bike tonight and move past it.