my grand uncle's wake was today. instead of having it at the funeral home, my parents decided to hold it at the cafe (closed for the day, taped up the windows). his cremated remains would be at the home until such time that would allow them to bury him at cambridge cemetery. originally the wake was scheduled for yesterday saturday but because my sister might not be able to make it it was moved to sunday. due to the fact that some people were attending church, the wake was scheduled to begin at 2pm. not everyone got the message because people began showing up at early as noontime. i thought maybe someone would contact me to give me a ride but by 1:30pm i decided to walk to the cafe on my own. when i arrived the place was crowded with people (which explained why nobody came to get me), some were even leaving while i was just arriving. there was food and drinks and in one corner my father had the slideshow i made running off of an HDTV.

the big surprise was my grand uncle's ex-wife naomi showing up. we knew his two daughters would come, we weren't expecting their mother to be there as well. i haven't seen my grand aunt in a long time, not since the 80's. my 2nd aunt used to go to church with them and we'd occasionally get filtered updates through her. it was nice to see her, whatever differences people had in life, hopefully through death people can come together.

a lot of people who used to work at lucky garden came as well, former waiters and dishwashers. one of my grand uncle's nurses came too, a young man who'd been bathing him for nearly half a decade. a group of my sister's friends came as well, though i'm not sure why since they've never met my grand uncle before.

later the son of my 3rd grand uncle - my grand uncle's younger brother - came to show his respects. like my family, my grand uncle helped them to immigrate to the US. my grand uncle's own brother didn't show up because he said he was sick, but their relationship had been estranged for a while, and it was good enough to have one of his sons there to represent their family. i haven't seen him in a while either, not since the 80's, and i probably wouldn't recognize him if i saw him on the streets.

everyone left by around 6pm. a lot more people showed up than we originally anticipated. all that was left was my family along with my 2nd aunt and my godmother. we did some clean-up before i got a ride back to my place close to 7pm. i brought back some leftover sandwiches that i wasn't planning on eating at first because i wanted something warm but was too lazy to cook so i finished some sub with italian meats and olives.