A funny funeral story, on this, the anniversary of my father's death

so I'm going to tell you a funny/horrific story about it, while I'm stuck here in memory lane:

My father hooked up with this creature (you'll see why I call her that, I hope), about three years before he died.  She was only the second of his girlfriends that I had ever met - he made a big deal about taking my brother and I out to dinner with them, once.  They both drank all during dinner, and I didn't drive, so I spent a good 30 minutes trying to get Big/Only Brother to take their keys away and drive us home, but instead wound up getting yelled at for being a baby, and driven home by an angry drunk, his semi-sloppy girlfriend, and my silent brother: such fun!

Their relationship was more like an episode of Cops than anything else: They both drank excessively, they both lost work because of it, they both had severe anger management issues, (and children under 10 -) It was obviously a match made in heaven!  They were on-again off-again to the extreme, having lived together at least twice over the course of their relationship.  To the best of my knowledge (mostly secondhand through my sister, who was 6-10 years old at the time, but also through Daddy himself, then and later on), there were physical fights, a lot of screaming matches and thrown telephones, holes punched in walls, and eventually, my daddy, during one of their mutual tantrums threatened her dad that if he didn't put her back on the phone he would kill him, and so there ultimately were restraining orders and jail time involved.  Which didn't stop them from getting together again when he got out of jail, or breaking up again after losing a baby the spring before he passed away.  (To this day, I don't really know if "losing the baby" was code for "she didn't want the baby, so she got rid of it" as my father professed, or not.  I actually didn't want to know anything about any of it, but my father was not the type to cry into his beer: he was the type to drink his beer, and everybody else's beer, and then try to cry on the closest available shoulder.)

So, when he died, they'd been broken up, after yet another mega fight, in which he screamed that she was a "murdering whore," and she collapsed in tears, drove away and called Child Protective Services on him.

Obviously, star-crossed lovers. 

So a month or two later, when he died, nobody thought to contact her, but his death was in the papers, of course, and they knew some of the same people, and her kid went to SisterK's school, so she found out.  And when we showed up at the funeral home for the viewing that night, early, like family does, my grandmother was over inspecting the flower arrangements (because, please, God, don't let her have to see her son in that box any more), and she noticed that the Ex-Girlfriend had sent a flower arrangement.  Which she promptly told the undertaker to dispose of.

They were removed from the room with very little fanfare - I figure most people didn't even know it had happened - and we continued with our torturous vigil (I Hate Wakes!  They Are Hideous! Please Don't Have A Viewing For Me ~ Just have the Post-Party Food Section, and then everybody can go home). 

About three hours in, I am sitting in the chair nearest the casket - nobody else could sit there, so it's where I sat - and one of my uncles (Daddy was one of 9 children) and my brother coming zipping across the room towards me, and my uncle asks me if I'm ok to walk.  (The funeral home was not accessible, but I was more walkable back then.) I just sat there trying to understand what the hell was happening, and he repeated himself: "Can you walk?" 

It was said so urgently that I thought something horrible had happened and we were leaving - somebody passed out (common both in my family and at our wakes); there was a fire; I didn't even know.  But as I stood up, I noticed that we were walking (as quickly as I could) with a crowd of people, but we were all headed toward the smoking room, the back of the building, instead of the exit.  I went along, still having no idea what the hell was happening, and then my uncle starts telling me that the Ex had shown up, and that Grandmother had said that she refused to be in the room with her (when she called CPS, she had made entirely false claims against my grandmother, as well), so that's why the mass evacuation.

There must have been 75 of us who scrambled from the two larger outer rooms and squished into that one tiny room for a good five minutes, before one of my uncles asked my grandmother if she wanted the Ex to leave.  When she said that she did, an embassy of uncles, brothers, and cousins stepped out into the main room, and told her that she was not welcome here, and that she would have to go.  I remember so clearly that the undertaker didn't seem ruffled by this at all - I assume family feuds are part of his routine - but later I had a cousin from my step-dad's family tell me that it was the 'craziest, most intimidating thing he had ever seen at a funeral', so it must have been shocking to some of the other people too.

She left when she was asked to leave, and stood outside crying for a while.  Which is where the funny comes in.  SisterJ (then 16) and a few of the younger cousins had been outside the whole time, and so they didn't know anything about the drama that had occurred inside.  When SisterJ saw the Ex, who she didn't know or recognize, crying, she went over and hugged her, offering comfort.  Two of our male cousins came outside as this was happening, and, after the Ex had left, told SisterJ about how she'd been comforting the enemy - the same person who'd upset Grandmother and had been asked to leave.  She was mortified, but it seemed to cheer everybody else up when they heard it, even Grandmother, who just put it down to SisterJ's sweet nature.  

And that's a little glimpse into the 'normal' of my family.  We evacuated a wake, forced someone else to leave, somebody hugged that person as they were ordered out, and then we all had a good chuckle about it.  If you don't know what to do with that information, I can't really blame you.  It's been ten years since my dad's funeral, and neither do I      

Got caught up watching M*A*S*H* marathon: How awesome is M*A*S*H*?  When I was in high school, and being home tutored for most of my classes, M*A*S*H* was on about three different channels at different points during the day, and I made my way through what I assume was all eleven years worth of shows. (M*A*S*H* was only one of a few shows I could watch with Nana and not have to listen to her complain about how horrible the world was during every scene: A show about war, she had no complaints about the downfall of our society; Friends, on the other hand made her think the apocolypse was right around the corner. :shrug:)

Every so often though, I am flipping my way through, and TV Land will have one on that I either didn't catch back then, or have completely forgotten about.  But the one that sucked me in tonight was the one where the reporter comes and does a documentary on the whole crew, and how a M*A*S*H* unit runs, and is basically a highlight reel of the seasons up till that point.  And even though I know it is coming, when they show the clip of Radar reading the message that Colonel Blake has died?  I can't help but tear up.  Considering I didn't watch the show until 13 years after it had gone off the air, I had no idea what was coming, and so it was still unexpected for me, still shocking.  And I thought about what it must have been like, watching the show religiously, back when it first aired, and to have that happen.  It's not real, obviously, but that kick, that gasp, that's real.

When my father died, I had just turned twenty, and we hadn't really spoken - aside from terse politeness and arguments during which he berated me as unsympathetic and I struggled not to cry - for quite a few years.  He was a less-than-functional alcoholic, and I was his oldest daughter, the one who had to take care of all the things he forgot - like having a birthday party for my nine year old sister, or picking up the pieces when he had disappointed my brother yet again, or helping my grandmother figure out how to deal with Child's Services when his ex-girlfriend called and reported him just for spite - and I had, by that point had my fill of it.  He was irresponsible, and I, Ms. Uber Responsible, was just done playing along like everything was fine.  When the back porch door to my grandmother's house would creak open, I would automatically tense, look at the clock, and hope against hope that it was anybody but him.

It was the ultimate reversal: as a little girl, whose daddy was in the navy her entire life, I had spent years wishing that he would come home again.  But during that period, after he'd been kicked out of the Navy and moved back home to live with my grandparents, I spent an awful lot of time wishing he would stay away.

But today, watching M*A*S*H* and remembering that tiny gasp I had when Henry Blake's plane crashed over the Sea of Japan, I was also tackling a chore I'd been putting off for a while - going through the Mass Cards, regular cards, and funeral book that I somehow gained custody of after my father died - and I remembered the much bigger kick, the full body freeze that I felt when my mom told me he had died.

And I remember thinking that it couldn't be true, that I was somehow misunderstanding her, and looking at my brother's face, and the horror and fear that was so clear in his face, and thinking: "I should be feeling like him."  But I was frozen, at first - I'm not sure I can explain how stuck I really seemed to be - it was like people around me were talking and acting in a way I thought was appropriate to the situation, and I was a step back, physically doing the things I knew I should be doing  - heading straight over to my sister and grandmother, holding them while they cried; comforting people at the wake; not breaking down when his mentally disabled brother couldn't understand why he wouldn't get up out of the casket - but I wasn't in my body while I was doing those things.  I did them because that's what you do: wakes and funerals and phone calls and thank you notes - I took the steps one after the other, and did the best I could.

But here I am, twelve years later, having carried all of this stuff - the flower cards and 'guest book' (they should really call it something other than that), the crucifix he held and the ginormous bible they gave us along with his ashes - to the new house, packed away in a box in the basement, forgotten.  Except we're trying to clean the basement, and there was this white paper bag, full of things I didn't want to face, and didn't know what to do with.

Here are all the lists I had to make post-wake, in order to organize the thank you notes, which I had taken charge of (Please, god, give me something to be in charge of!): who knew these people, which great-uncle's church group had sent this card, did anybody have an address for Mr & Mrs So & So?  (My father's death came in the middle of clump of family deaths - one each summer for three years - so I had learned a lot about funeral etiquette at my grandfather's funeral the year before: how you're supposed to put your address on the envelope of the Mass Card, so that grieving people don't have to track you down to say thank you. But my friends, my brother's friends, my sister's friends - they were all young... some as young as nine, and (luckily) inexperienced in the ways of funerals, and so there was some extra legwork to be done.)  

Here are the 45 or so perpetual Spiritual Bouquets, for a guy who was over the Catholic Church and what he called all its hypocrisy.  Here are the smaller cards from the flower bouquets - one from my brother sister and I, one from his mom, one from his brothers and sisters.  And the memory of a card which is missing - that of his volatile ex-girlfriend.

{ I can't seem to find a post in which I talk about how crazy fucked up my father's wake was, but it's long so I'm not going to get it all in here tonight (Maybe tomorrow's post, if I can get it to make sense to anybody who wasn't there).  Suffice it to say, she was not welcomed at the wake, and her flowers were disposed of.  }

But there's all these things and I don't know what you're supposed to do with them: Do I have to hold on to them forever, because it seems disrespectful to just toss them in the recycling?  Should I ask my brother and sister if they want them, even though neither of them are practicing religious anymore either?  I don't know who left me with all of these stupid grown up things to have to think about.

In the end, I weeded through them, keeping some of the ones I figured would be most important (although I still might get rid of those as well: I know who was there for me then, I don't need these cards to prove it), and putting the rest, with a thankful heart, in the bin.  (Even though it felt a little sacrilegious, even to this extremely Ex-Catholic.)  I'll give my brother and sister a heads up that I have some, if they want them, and I'll get rid of the rest, no sense dragging it along if it just feels like baggage.

And I'm surprised by how much baggage there still seems to be.

Let's talk a little

My mind lately seems to be going at about triple it's normal speed. Frantic, speed-brain, for some reason. It's strange, really, because things are relatively calm (or what passes for it in my family anyways), and yet I can't get my stupid brain to slow down long enough for me to grip on to anything. Or - alternately - I get hold of something and just can't let it go.

July started off OK - I even took the month off from doctors, because all the news was bad and painful and just more of the same and I couldn't think about it anymore. But of course it hasn't stopped me from thinking about it: At the very least though, by taking the time off, I couldn't be poked or prodded or asked stupid questions about it anymore.

And then my brother and sister-in-law took the kids to the Cape for a week, and were too lazy to drive them up for a few days before that, and all of the "good summer fun with the kids" I had planned to cram into my month (and my mind) instead turned into "days of doing nothing but sitting around thinking about my life." These days were not nearly as much fun as the ones I had anticipated. Left with entirely too much time to ponder at least two major family situations (one of which has blown over and another that continues on without any solution to be seen), my own non-improving health and relationships situations, and the fact that yesterday was the anniversary of my father's death (not to mention a very rude person who treated it as if, because my father and I did not get along, this anniversary should be pretty meaningless to me); it's been an unexpectedly emotional time. There's just all this stuff, and I feel like I need energy to sift through it, and I haven't got the energy - emotional or physical - that god gave a gnat, so it's all heavy lifting.

It's all heavy lifting.

And I don't, as usual, realize how heavy, really, until I sit here with my fingers tapping away trying to explain why I haven't posted anything lately, or taken pictures of the gorgeous kids or why I've signed up for at least three projects this summer that I haven't even begun to consider, let alone start. Until I sit here and let my fingers start talking, I let my brain rev itself up into a frenzy, and don't realize that not saying anything, not posting anything is part of the trouble.

So here's some more of what I've been toting around, this week particularly -

We've been attempting to clean out Nana's storage: Yes, 2 years is a long time to pay storage fees, but when you roll up that door and the smell - her smell - hits you, I would gladly pay for another two years just to not have to sit there and sift through the contents of her life while my uncle - who is clueless - natters on about "Goodwill" and "Junk" and my mother and aunt try to move as quickly as possible so we can just leave already, and all I want to do is sit there with a box of stuff opened around me and absorb it into my skin. I've been taking pictures and saving things from the scrap bin; trying to hold all my emotions in in case my mom needs to let hers out.

I'm in that tiny little hallway, with it's concrete floors and neon orange doors, watching as box after box after box comes out. When my uncle pops out one of the windows on my grandmother's dollhouse (they're plastic and pop back in), I bite my tongue and control my need to scream about how important it is to fix it Right Away! I watch my aunt take a box of china she shouldn't be lifting and wrap it up so clumsily that it's sure to be in pieces the next time we open the box, but I don't say anything: I just wait till she turns around and slide the box in my direction, re-wrap it when she heads out for a cigarette. When my mom opens a box with baby shoes in it - shoes that Nana had lovingly wrapped in tissue paper, for her 'baby' who died twenty years before she did - mom doesn't cry, so I don't cry.

See, I know that this stuff is not my Nana, and that - in all honesty - she couldn't really have cared about the majority of it: glasses that lived in cabinets, tea sets made of gold that never made it to the table, knickknacks from places she never traveled to, lots of things that said 'grandma' because stuff that said 'nana' was so much harder to find. She wouldn't mind if we tossed all that out, would actually have done it herself if she'd have thought about us having to do it now.

But I also know that there are memories to be found here - not just my memories, but everyones - and so I feel like I have to safeguard them - for my mom, who isn't thinking anything except "get me out of here"; for all the grandchildren who can't be in that dark little hallway with me, and for all the great grandchildren - here now and to come - who never got a chance to know just how awesome a lady they missed out on.

So I sit there, allergies acting all renegade and body too sore to take breaths, it seems, setting aside a porcelain cat for one sister, a rogue leprechaun for my brother, a picture of himself that my cousin has probably never seen. Some of this stuff means something to me, some of it doesn't but I'm determined not to let the "one thing" that somebody would have wanted get tossed in a box for Goodwill. I feel like the only person there capable of remembering that this isn't just stuff, it has value to someone, and they should at least have the chance to say "No, you can toss that" or "Oh my god, I totally remember this!" So I click the shutter on my camera again and again and again, hoping that I'm capturing the something somebody wants, before I repack the boxes and watch my uncle roll his eyes again.

It's just heavy lifting.

And I try to be gentle with myself, try to say: Even though it doesn't seem like right now is a busy time, you are doing a lot of work. But it doesn't always sink in, because part of my heavy lifting is the way I think about myself, the way I don't give myself credit for the things that I do, the way I beat up on myself for all the things I don't do. It's a tricky line, I think - to hold yourself accountable without tearing yourself apart. (At least it is for me.)

I read, somewhere, in a recent blog post of somebody's, that one of the rules to remember in blogging is that your blog is not your best friend. If you feel like you need to vent, pick up the phone, don't complain to your audience or they'll stop coming back. I think that's probably good advice, but I don't know that I can follow it. I appreciate it, honestly, with my whole heart, that you people come back time and again to read things like this, where my head is a spinning top and my heart feels cracked open.

I won't say that I don't have people in my life who would listen, if I started talking, because I do, but it's different to write it here, freer somehow. Saying what I need to say to get my head back on straight is a large part of what's kept me writing for so long at this blog, and - while it may be the reason I don't have a zillion followers - it's also part of the reason that I cherish the followers I do have.

So, now that I feel somewhat normal again, what's going on with you all? I know somebody has a new job (YAY Ms J!!!) and other people are dealing with their own brands of chaos (Hope the bed rest is going well, Laurie!). I hope that you're all enjoying your weekend, come what may, and I promise to write again soon. (And less emotionally jumbled, hopefully.)

Thank You

Last year on Veteran's Day, I posted a picture of my father , circa 1980 something, during one of his many tours of duty. He was in the United States Navy from 1978-1993 (? on the ending date), and it's one of my favorite pictures of him, even though I don't have any idea when/where he is in the picture. I was lucky enough to get the picture from three of his on-ship buddies when we met with them a few years back, & they couldn't remember where they might have been (although the consensus was that it was probably the Mediterranean). My father passed away 10 years ago, and our relationship was incredibly complex. But those men remembered him, and thought well enough of him to try to look him up 15-20 years after they had served together. They thought well enough of him to contact my brother, my sister and I and to arrange a meeting with us, after they found out he had died. They brought us pictures and stories and I will always appreciate them for doing it, because so many of my happy memories of my daddy have long been overshadowed by some of his more atrocious behavior during his last years on earth. Regardless of all that, though, I do know that he served his country well and that he worked diligently for many of his years in the service.

I have always been proud to be a sailor's daughter, even when I wasn't proud of the sailor himself. I have pictures of his burial at sea, a few pictures of him in his uniform, but instead I'm going to choose another picture that his friends gave us when we met them. Here he is in the tiny little quarters on ship, being a goof:



My family has a long history of service, actually: My Nana's father was in the Navy, and served during World War I aboard the USS Mt Vernon. Originally a seized German ship, the Mt Vernon was torpedoed by the Germans in September of 1918, while James (my great-grandfather) was serving. Although luckily uninjured, he was sent back to the US following the attack, and served at a Naval Hospital (which is, coincidentally, right around the corner from the new house) near Boston until he was discharged. Here is a photo of the ship's crew I found online - He's in there somewhere:



And here he is up close, in uniform:



My other maternal great-grandfather, (my grandfather's father) also served during what his discharge papers call "The World War" as a Wireman and a Private in the United States Army from 1917-1919. (Unfortunately I don't have any photos of him in his uniform, and actually only two or three pictures of him at all.) And his son, my mother's father, my Papa, served in the Army during WWII: All I know about his service is that he was a driver in a convoy going up the narrow mountain roads (in Northern Africa, maybe?) and the truck in front of him was hit, and drove right over the edge of the mountain. When he came back from the war, he never drove again. Here he is at the very end of the chow line (and not nearly as excited as some of his fellow troops):

On my father's side, three of his brothers served in various armed forces; all of my great-uncles and two of my great-aunts served during WWII (my Grandfather was the only child (of 7) who could not); Both of my Grandmother's brothers fought during the Battle of the Bulge - One of her brothers was a medic, and later told her that his biggest fear was that he would be running through the battlefield and be called to a soldier only to see it was his brother - thankfully that did not happen, and they both made it back safely; And the oldest American Veteran in my family (that I am aware of) was my great-great-Grandfather - my Grandmother's grandfather - who was killed in a flash flood after enlisting in the Union Army.

I'm lucky enough now that none of my uncles, aunts or cousins are serving any longer, but I can remember how scared I was during the first Gulf War, knowing that my father was over there serving. I can specifically remember flipping off the Nintendo one afternoon and CNN was on, and they were showing the live bombings, and I was frozen in fear, worrying that one of those fighting might have been my father, and that something horrible could happen to him. I cannot explain how much gratitude I have for those who are serving, and for their families. Today and always: Thank you.

Always surviving

Today, my aunt packed up and headed back to Ohio at some ungodly hour of the morning, and after she left, my Grandmother knocked on the den door, came in and sat beside me on the bed. "I just said good-bye to Mac", she said, her voice low and thin.

I put my head on her shoulder, she put her head on mine. A few minutes later, she whispered "I just don't know if I'm ever going to see her again."

She was crying as she said it, and her tears made me want to flinch they were so heavy.

Then her hearing aid whistled at us, and she collected herself, pulled herself back in, saying that she shouldn't be leaning on my shoulder, because it hurts me.

As if I care.

But she bustled out, and I knew she needed to be alone for a few minutes: Because sometimes you just can't cry in front of other people; because sometimes you're afraid you might not be able to stop.

I sat on the bed, in the dark early morning, with the stupid birds chirping away outside the window, and the light trying to creep in through the cracks of the shades, and I thought about what it must be like to have to say goodbye to your child, never knowing if you'll see them again.

Of course none of us ever knows, but we each have our own false comforts of being young, or healthy, or knowing that you only have to wait till tomorrow, or that you're right down the street, or that you've had all your shots.

I thought about how scary it must be to have lived long enough to know that it doesn't matter how safe you are, how old you are, how prepared you are: no matter what, life and death happen. You can't control them.

To have lost everyone who came before you, to know there's nobody left between you and what comes next ? How frightening it must be to be 92 and to know that whatever time you have left, it's not going to be enough.


It's scary for me to think about that, to try to imagine my world without her, but I've scraped together the remnants of my own naive beliefs, and I wrap them around me like a cocoon of denial... it hurts too much to go there.


I can't imagine what it must be like for her, without the comforts -however false - to protect her heart.

After a while, I went out to the couch where she was laying down and I just sat and held her hand. The tears slid from her eyes, backwards toward the pillow, slowly now, but I could tell she'd been crying harder, by the dampness on her pillow.

She apologized for getting me up (again: as if I care).
"I love to see them come," she said, "but I hate to see them go."

And we were both silent for a while, and I can't be sure what she was thinking, but I know that I was thinking about all the people who've gone and never made it back: Three of her children, my father included, 10 years ago this week. Her husband. Her mother, her grandmother, all of her siblings. Nana. Uncles and aunts, cousins and friends.

People you said goodbye to like it was any other day, only it turned out not to be. People you clung to as you said goodbye, knowing there'd be no tomorrows. People you waved away, absentmindedly, only to regret it forever.
People who just... left.

And I thought about how brave you have to be to let the people you love out of your sight, even for a moment. Why can't we all just sit around holding hands all day, every day? (Yes, I realize that we'd all go crazy within 10 minutes, but still...)

She lost her mother when she was six years old, and she's managed to make it through everyday of the next 86 years, knowing how fragile life is, but not being able to do anything about it besides live. I know it's all we can do, but sometimes it seems like SO MUCH, like TOO MUCH. 86 years and counting of risking, and loving, and wishing and lasting, and trying, and fighting and fearing, and hoping, and just ... being.

And surviving - sometimes curled up in a ball, and other times with arms open wide - but always surviving.

For all the Veterans in my life

May you have some peace today.