The first post

Someone from church called me last week to ask if I'd play piano for a funeral on Saturday, last Saturday. I had never met the man who died, but that didn't surprise me because I only know about 5 people in our ward by name (this is not typical for me, but it is the current situation). I said that was fine, and they told me it would only be hymns from the hymnbook so I could just show up when the funeral started.

I haven't been to that many funerals, but I've been to a few profoundly sad ones. I think this one was the saddest one I've ever been to. There were probably about 15 people there. The first speaker was the man's apartment manager, the second was his neighbor's mom, and his brother also spoke, even though he started by saying that he never really knew him because he went to college when his brother was still a child. A man who'd never met him sang a song, I played the piano, and the first counselor in the bishopric conducted the whole thing. There was one tiny flower arrangement. I hardly know any of the details about this man's life, and I don't really know how he died (they mentioned he was "found"), but I'd never been to a funeral before where so little could be said about the life of the person who had died.

I'm pretty sure that if I died today, my funeral would be sad because it would have to be kind of a freak accident or medical surprise, but it would be well-attended by really fabulous people. My hope is that this would be the case no matter when I die. I've been kind of jolted into loneliness ever since I finished law school in April, and I think this blog is a way to reassure myself that, regardless of how few people I see, I can still communicate my disarmingly clever, insightful, refreshing, and exhuberant ideas into cyberspace. This blog will not fill the chairs at my funeral, but it will curb my loneliness and provide an outlet for the above-mentioned ideas. My baby will fill the funeral chair. Between my blog and my baby (and a bunch of other projects I've gotten started), I will climb a spiral of happiness and fulfillment to heights yet unknown.

So here I begin . . .