That's where I belong.

Funerals are not good places to meet people. And they, for the most part, are very foreign ground to me. The only thing I remember from my grandfather's funeral was my great aunt Marion making me touch his forehead when he was in the casket. I think this incident prompted me to spend the reception hiding under a table and eating black olives. I was 6. All other funerals that I've been to, I can count two, were for people that I only knew through association; A work colleague of my dad's and a friend's grandfather in middle school. Today, my grand attendance total for funerals was bumped up to four. One of mother's cousins lost his battle with cancer this week in Montreal. I went to the funeral and let's just say I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. If it was up to me, I probably wouldn't have gone.

I know I've talked a lot about the language barrier I'm having, but let's talk a little about my brain. You would think after two semi-productive years of spanish in high school, 4 more semesters in college, and living in Albuquerque, I'd speak spanish. And you would be wrong! My brain just cannot process other languages. It's probably just a mental block that I can't get down, but dang if it's not there. The highlight of my Canadian day is hearing something in conversation that I actually understand and I've been reduced to reading ads in the newspaper like they're a picture book, trying to sort out the language (by the way, you will learn nothing about grammar by doing this). I wonder if that part of my brain is just retarded, but it really is hard on me. And I don't know what part of my brain thought that being in Quebec was going to be a cakewalk. It hasn't been.

And an even bigger cakewalk under these circumstances would probably be going to an event, a sad event, with 70 members of your extended family you've never met and trying to explain to them that no, you can't speak their language. In fact, you speak the language that's destroying their culture. And did I mention the Catholicism? I have a hard enough time following a Catholic mass in English. In French? Forget about it. This was not my idea of a good day.

It was about as awkward as you could imagine. The man who died just happened to have 9 brothers and sisters, so the event was packed to brim with my gene pool. And every time I met someone new, Rene, the man I'm staying with (and bless him so, so much. Not only has he opened up his home to me, he's my pocket translator everywhere I go), would politely explain that I was from New Mexico and didn't speak English. And I'd just stand there and smile, like a monkey.

At one point during the service, one of the brothers was saying some remarks about everyone who had come to the service. He said something about me, which I had no clue of, until every single person in the church turned to look at me and Rene whispered to me that I was mentioned, since I was from so far away. By about that time, my brain was just hurting from trying so, so hard to translate things in my head, with the limited French I've picked up over the week. Once again, just politely smile. Awkward much.

I ended up in the bathroom crying during the reception, no lies. It's weird to feel this new connection to all these people, telling me they knew my mother when she was a little girl or they loved my grandmother's cooking, but to feel so, completely separate from it. Especially at a funeral.

But once I got out of the bathroom, one of the many women I met over the course of the day came up to me with 2 brownies on a plate and invited me to come sit with her, in English. She was married to one of the deceased brothers and she sat with my for about half an hour, asking me about my trip and my mother, and telling me stories she'd heard from her husband about my family. I didn't even remember her name, you know how it goes. Maybe she sensed I was having a tough time. I know how sad and misplaced I must have looked in that sea of people. And maybe she is just a genuinely kind woman who, like Rene, wanted to know about the part of her extended family that I inhabit. Whatever it was, I was so grateful to her I almost broke down at our little English-speaking table.

When we were leaving, Rene told me it was kind of sad that I met all these people at a funeral, since funerals are such sad places to be. Then he started to say something about them being happy places too, because everyone gets together, that sort of thing. He couldn't quite explain it in English, so I said, "They're a celebration of life, too." He paused for a second. "You stole my words!" he said.