Weekend of a Sunday 2
I dunno why, but I only felt colder when Martha finished saying what she needed to say, mostly because I knew what was coming after the death and the burial and the day or so of a loss sinking in. I knew there was a will to be read, and I knew what would be in the will--as did everyone in the family--and I knew that the will meant different things to different people, and I know I cannot possibly write a nuanced Willaims monologue explaining precisely what my grandfather's will means, but I'll try, in the end, to get to the point. I'll only say right now that it has nothing to do with the money.
The line began. The family hour ended, and, as the edited biopic of my granfather played in a temporary loop on the funeral parlor's HD-TV screens mounted to the corners of each room, the human procession began. We were told by the funeral director to line up along the coffin, so we sort of did--my cousin Zac and his wife Laura, then me, then my cousin Brooke (Zac and Brooke brother and sister, Pam's children), then my aunt Karen (the Unmarried Daughter), then Pam, my step-mom Marilyn, Dad, and the chaos of Alex, then Martha (the Unmarried Special Friend Whose Husband was Murdered, Don't You Remember?) and then the exit. At some point, during all the meeting and greeting and flash mourning, Brooke admitted to me that she often had to turn her head when I spoke to the people coming thru the line. "It's funny. I can't listen to you talk to them--you're so obviously not listening."
Which is true, but not true. Actually, I ONLY want to listen, I want to tell Brooke. I don't feel like responding. I'm a listener. I don't do well when people actually expect a response of some sort, and all of these people want a response, they want to know that their sympathies are well-placed and validated, and I don't have the energy to give them that. I want to explain to Brooke that, yes, I am touched that so many people with so many far-flung ties to my grandfather would show up on a hair-split notice (most only learned of his death that morning, over their coffee and sausage and eggs, while reading the obits) to offer condolences, but what I'd really prefer is that all these people in line tell me how they knew the old man, what they knew of him, and why they wanted to come. What I want to tell Brooke is that my automatic, repetitive replies are simply a mantra meant to move things along and hope for an answer to a question I didn't ask. Because it's such a standard question, why bother to ask it?
I'm miserable, shaking all these hands, recognizing a tenth of the faces. I'm squirming. I'm uncomfortable. I'm worried that the entire family is presenting a wholly inappropriate representation of grief because we're all greeting long-losts, we're all giggling and joking, we're all shifting from foot to foot. And then, a short sturdy woman in a black dress, wearing black sunglasses, dives in from the exit, goes against the grain of the line, reaches through, and pulls me out. I was reminded of the final scene of The Graduate.
Pam Kingsbury. She'd read the obit, saw the time of the visitation, and made it a point to come by. She'd brought her husband with her, who is suffering from Alzheimer's--she'd left him in the car long enough to come get me. I followed her out, grateful for a break and a touch of reality, and she told me, "Jack might not recognize you." I might not recognize me either.
We approached her car, which was parked in the back of the funeral parlor, in the shade of trees. Jack was in the passenger's seat, in comfortable pants and slippers, staring out at the world, and I wondered what he was thinking. Pam opened the passenger door and said, "Here's Marc. You remember him. He's home from New York, your old stomping grounds."
Jack did not remember me, but I put out my hand and he grabbed it and shook it. "Hi," he said, and smiled. I wondered what he was thinking.
"I brought you a gift," Pam said, scurrying around the car to the driver's side. I asked Jack how he was doing, and he said it was a beautiful day, and I agreed, and wondered what he was thinking.
Pam gave me her gift--clearly a book, wrapped up in blue tissue paper. I wondered what I was thinking, and what Jack was thinking, and held the book in my hands for a moment wondering if I should unwrap it then or wait till a quiet time alone, when I'd know better what I was thinking and be sure that I had no idea what Jack might be thinking, but decided to open the wrapping to see what book it was Pam thought I needed just then.
Kill the Buddha: The Heretic's Bible.
The funeral came after the visitation. Everyone wanting to moved from the rooms with the corpse to the big room that was not a chapel but made to look like one, just across the hall, and waited for the main course, which was my grandfather's coffin rolling down the aisle one step closer to a final destination. I once wrote in a short story that there are no arrivals but only a series of destinations. After this weekend, tho, I think maybe it's vice-versa. Would make as much sense.
My grandfather's coffin was draped in an American flag because he fought in a war that wasn't a war at all. Korea. And I don't know if he actually fought or not--he never spoke about it. But he was a veteran, and he was draped in a flag. And I was sitting in the row reserved for pall bearers, and Alex was sitting beside me because he was a pall bearer too, and the end of the funeral almost made me cry because it reminded me of things before the things that made it all dark: out of the sound system came my grandfather's voice, singing a song I don't remember, playing his guitar, a somber, sweet voice and a confident guitar strum, and sobs from the not-quite-chapel. I looked at Alex beside me, whose eyes were large and watering. "That's Papaw," I said of the music.
"I never heard him sing," Alex replied.
We were at the grave, having lifted and marched the coffin closer to its end, and there were three men in uniform. One had a bugle, and wandered down a hill. My great-grandmother, 95, had made this journey with the coffin and its contents, and could not hear or see anything too well, and was sitting in a metal chair staring at the flag draped across the coffin of the second son of her's to die within a year. "It's a big flag," she said loudly, unawar of Taps being played by the soldier with the bugle who'd wandered down the hill. "I'm all right." Tho she really wasn't--she'd collapsed earlier, over the corpse, when she got close enough to see it.
The end of Taps echoed, and the two soldiers book-ending the coffin snapped to attention.
"This chair is hurting my back," my great-grandmother announced, and I resisted the urge to get up, take off my jacket, roll it up and offer it to her for comfort. There were people all around her--surely one of them could make her a bit more comfortable.
Alex was beside me. He cut his eyes towards me, smiling. I put an arm around him and stifled a fond giggle.
The soldiers at the coffin began folding the flag. It took a while, and they were sweating in the late afternoon sun. Three bullets were shoved into the flag after they compressed it into a triangle. And then one soldier took the flag in his palms, moved to my great-grandmother, and knelt before her. He asked her to accept this flag on behalf of a grateful nation, and I knew, because he wasn't shouting, that she'd heard nothing he said. She took the flag in her hands and said, "Well, thank ya," and I almost thought she'd try to stuff it behind her back, for support.
A long few hours later, Dad gave me a blank check and told me to go rent a movie. Alex came with me. It was late Sunday nite, and the only thing good, that Alex and I agreed on, was Shaun of the Dead. I'll let you discover the irony of that.
So, after the funeral and the visitation and the Southern Funeral Food at Pam's house, with relatives and friends and complete strangers stuffing their clean plates at the buffet of grief, I fell onto the couch, Alex crashed onto the floor, Dad tossed back in the recliner and Marilyn, my step-mom, slept in the chair, and we all watched a comedy about British zombies coming back from the grave to amuse and entertain. Alex and Dad didn't quite get the beginning, and Alex kept asking me where the zombies were, and where Shaun's bat was, and Dad winced at every curse word, but by the end we were all laughing.
(cont'd)
The line began. The family hour ended, and, as the edited biopic of my granfather played in a temporary loop on the funeral parlor's HD-TV screens mounted to the corners of each room, the human procession began. We were told by the funeral director to line up along the coffin, so we sort of did--my cousin Zac and his wife Laura, then me, then my cousin Brooke (Zac and Brooke brother and sister, Pam's children), then my aunt Karen (the Unmarried Daughter), then Pam, my step-mom Marilyn, Dad, and the chaos of Alex, then Martha (the Unmarried Special Friend Whose Husband was Murdered, Don't You Remember?) and then the exit. At some point, during all the meeting and greeting and flash mourning, Brooke admitted to me that she often had to turn her head when I spoke to the people coming thru the line. "It's funny. I can't listen to you talk to them--you're so obviously not listening."
Which is true, but not true. Actually, I ONLY want to listen, I want to tell Brooke. I don't feel like responding. I'm a listener. I don't do well when people actually expect a response of some sort, and all of these people want a response, they want to know that their sympathies are well-placed and validated, and I don't have the energy to give them that. I want to explain to Brooke that, yes, I am touched that so many people with so many far-flung ties to my grandfather would show up on a hair-split notice (most only learned of his death that morning, over their coffee and sausage and eggs, while reading the obits) to offer condolences, but what I'd really prefer is that all these people in line tell me how they knew the old man, what they knew of him, and why they wanted to come. What I want to tell Brooke is that my automatic, repetitive replies are simply a mantra meant to move things along and hope for an answer to a question I didn't ask. Because it's such a standard question, why bother to ask it?
I'm miserable, shaking all these hands, recognizing a tenth of the faces. I'm squirming. I'm uncomfortable. I'm worried that the entire family is presenting a wholly inappropriate representation of grief because we're all greeting long-losts, we're all giggling and joking, we're all shifting from foot to foot. And then, a short sturdy woman in a black dress, wearing black sunglasses, dives in from the exit, goes against the grain of the line, reaches through, and pulls me out. I was reminded of the final scene of The Graduate.
Pam Kingsbury. She'd read the obit, saw the time of the visitation, and made it a point to come by. She'd brought her husband with her, who is suffering from Alzheimer's--she'd left him in the car long enough to come get me. I followed her out, grateful for a break and a touch of reality, and she told me, "Jack might not recognize you." I might not recognize me either.
We approached her car, which was parked in the back of the funeral parlor, in the shade of trees. Jack was in the passenger's seat, in comfortable pants and slippers, staring out at the world, and I wondered what he was thinking. Pam opened the passenger door and said, "Here's Marc. You remember him. He's home from New York, your old stomping grounds."
Jack did not remember me, but I put out my hand and he grabbed it and shook it. "Hi," he said, and smiled. I wondered what he was thinking.
"I brought you a gift," Pam said, scurrying around the car to the driver's side. I asked Jack how he was doing, and he said it was a beautiful day, and I agreed, and wondered what he was thinking.
Pam gave me her gift--clearly a book, wrapped up in blue tissue paper. I wondered what I was thinking, and what Jack was thinking, and held the book in my hands for a moment wondering if I should unwrap it then or wait till a quiet time alone, when I'd know better what I was thinking and be sure that I had no idea what Jack might be thinking, but decided to open the wrapping to see what book it was Pam thought I needed just then.
Kill the Buddha: The Heretic's Bible.
The funeral came after the visitation. Everyone wanting to moved from the rooms with the corpse to the big room that was not a chapel but made to look like one, just across the hall, and waited for the main course, which was my grandfather's coffin rolling down the aisle one step closer to a final destination. I once wrote in a short story that there are no arrivals but only a series of destinations. After this weekend, tho, I think maybe it's vice-versa. Would make as much sense.
My grandfather's coffin was draped in an American flag because he fought in a war that wasn't a war at all. Korea. And I don't know if he actually fought or not--he never spoke about it. But he was a veteran, and he was draped in a flag. And I was sitting in the row reserved for pall bearers, and Alex was sitting beside me because he was a pall bearer too, and the end of the funeral almost made me cry because it reminded me of things before the things that made it all dark: out of the sound system came my grandfather's voice, singing a song I don't remember, playing his guitar, a somber, sweet voice and a confident guitar strum, and sobs from the not-quite-chapel. I looked at Alex beside me, whose eyes were large and watering. "That's Papaw," I said of the music.
"I never heard him sing," Alex replied.
We were at the grave, having lifted and marched the coffin closer to its end, and there were three men in uniform. One had a bugle, and wandered down a hill. My great-grandmother, 95, had made this journey with the coffin and its contents, and could not hear or see anything too well, and was sitting in a metal chair staring at the flag draped across the coffin of the second son of her's to die within a year. "It's a big flag," she said loudly, unawar of Taps being played by the soldier with the bugle who'd wandered down the hill. "I'm all right." Tho she really wasn't--she'd collapsed earlier, over the corpse, when she got close enough to see it.
The end of Taps echoed, and the two soldiers book-ending the coffin snapped to attention.
"This chair is hurting my back," my great-grandmother announced, and I resisted the urge to get up, take off my jacket, roll it up and offer it to her for comfort. There were people all around her--surely one of them could make her a bit more comfortable.
Alex was beside me. He cut his eyes towards me, smiling. I put an arm around him and stifled a fond giggle.
The soldiers at the coffin began folding the flag. It took a while, and they were sweating in the late afternoon sun. Three bullets were shoved into the flag after they compressed it into a triangle. And then one soldier took the flag in his palms, moved to my great-grandmother, and knelt before her. He asked her to accept this flag on behalf of a grateful nation, and I knew, because he wasn't shouting, that she'd heard nothing he said. She took the flag in her hands and said, "Well, thank ya," and I almost thought she'd try to stuff it behind her back, for support.
A long few hours later, Dad gave me a blank check and told me to go rent a movie. Alex came with me. It was late Sunday nite, and the only thing good, that Alex and I agreed on, was Shaun of the Dead. I'll let you discover the irony of that.
So, after the funeral and the visitation and the Southern Funeral Food at Pam's house, with relatives and friends and complete strangers stuffing their clean plates at the buffet of grief, I fell onto the couch, Alex crashed onto the floor, Dad tossed back in the recliner and Marilyn, my step-mom, slept in the chair, and we all watched a comedy about British zombies coming back from the grave to amuse and entertain. Alex and Dad didn't quite get the beginning, and Alex kept asking me where the zombies were, and where Shaun's bat was, and Dad winced at every curse word, but by the end we were all laughing.
(cont'd)