It is Good Friday, between the hours of noon and 3:00pm, and I am using something electronic.
In my house growing up, Good Friday between the hours of noon and 3:00pm meant absolute silence. My mother believed that we should use that time – that teensy amount of time in our big long noisy childhood lives – to cease almost all stimulation and just be aware of what happened with Jesus right then.
It’s actually kind of a nice tradition, but when you’re a kid it means only one thing:
Thinking about Jesus? Was. Boring.
As an avid reader, I had more of an out than my sisters did. I was allowed to read during Good Friday No TV Or Music While Jesus Was On the Cross Time. So for me it was less boring than it was for my sisters, even though I do distinctly remember sitting on a swing in the backyard, staring at the ground and actually watching the grass grow one year, contemplating how it seemed like every Good Friday, no matter what the weather was, the sky got cloudy at noon.
That didn’t happen today. It’s a brilliantly blue-skied cloudless day.
Weird.
As an adult, I still like to honor the tradition my mother established. The only sound in my house right now is the dishwasher. Turns out, we’re not Amish. I’m allowed to use electricity during the Crucifixion Hours, I’m just not allowed to use stimulation unless it’s a book. But I’ve decided that writing and reading blog posts counts as the same as reading a book. I’m avoiding Facebook, though. That’s a little over-the-line, and if my mother sees that I was on and posted something, she’ll be disappointed in me. There’s no fun allowed on Good Friday.
Yes, that’s right. I’m 35, and my mother lives more than two hours away, and I’m still talking in terms of what I’m allowed to do.
And she thought I never listened.
Anyway, today is my day off. For many years, I’ve found myself at work wishing I had taken Good Friday off so that I wasn’t ignoring the import of the day while I was surrounded by stimulating work-associated things. I felt disconnected from the most mournful and meaningful week of the Christian calendar, and even though I’m not the most religious person, I don’t like to ignore that. I like the opportunity to reconnect and reboot.
What saves me from that disconnection is my music. Before I had to leave my choirs because of stupid work, Holy Week was the biggest week of the year for music. Rehearsal Monday; rehearsal Wednesday; Holy Thursday Mass to remember the Last Supper and the washing of the feet; Good Friday service to remember the Passion, crucifixion and death of Jesus; Holy Saturday Mass-A-Thon when all the converts are baptized/confirmed/receive First Communion (“Yes, yes, welcome to the Church, hurry up already, this is a two-hour thing tonight and we’re here all week plus there’s a quick turn-around and we have to be back here in less than 12 hours”); and Easter Sunday Mass.
We were always in great moods come Easter Sunday. The sad strings gave way to triumphant trumpets, and the purple choir robes were cast off to reveal joyful springtime colors. Some of the women in the group busted out their Easter hats. But mostly we were in great moods because we knew we were finally done. Also, though I didn’t do it this year, I generally give up sugar for Lent (the whole time, not just Monday through Saturday like the Church supposedly allows), and so on Easter Sunday morning I am hopped up on the brownies I had for breakfast.
Now I don’t get to sing as much and don’t generally go to church all four days. (Most Catholics don’t, and in fact are not required to.) But I have to admit… I miss it. I miss having the music and the low lights and candles to pull me in and wrap me up in the melancholy of what we’re commemorating and the impact of what it meant for the world. I’ve always found a soulful connectedness in churches at night. And whether you believe in Jesus as the Messiah or not, if you’ve been to any of the services, you know it’s a deeply touching time in the Church year.
Tonight, I will sing for the Good Friday service. (It’s the only time in the Church year when we have the full hour-long worship with Communion and don’t call it Mass, because there is no consecration of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. We also do not genuflect to the tabernacle when we enter or leave a pew, because we are mindful that Jesus has died and therefore the tabernacle is empty.) The woeful cello and violins will play and my breath will connect with my spirit to sing a message of sacrifice, sorrow and reflection. My co-cantor and the choir will fill my ears and the service will fill my heart. I will be still, and I will remember what it is to be profoundly human and profoundly hopeless. I will remember, so the joy of forgiveness and hope can be renewed.
Yesterday, Sister 1 was taking Twin Nephs to the babysitter for the day and one of them piped up that Easter was coming soon.
“Do you know what happens on Easter?” my sister asked.
“We go to Aunt Beth’s house!” Neph 2 replied with his arms in the air from happiness.
“Well, yes,” Sister 1 said. “But something else happens, too.” And then she started trying to explain the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to a couple of four-year-olds. Godspeed, sis.
Neph 1, ever serious and sensitive, said, “But why did Jesus die?”
“Well,” said Sister 1, clearly in over her head with these kids, “He died for us, because He thinks we’re special.”
God love him, Neph 1 seemed content with this explanation, and Neph 2 had already moved on to other interests.
Ten minutes later, they arrived at the babysitter’s house, and Neph 1 ran in and excitedly exclaimed, “I’m special! And Jesus dies tomorrow!”
Later in the day, the babysitter was talking to the kids about how they were going to make pizzas the next day, as part of their regular Friday routine. She always has to remind them that they have to wait for the dough to rise. And sure enough, Neph 2 proved he had been listening in the car after all.
“Jesus will rise like our dough!” he declared.
Now I’m a little worried there will be a Jesus-like image in the pizza.
However you understand God or your soul… I hope you take the chance to reconnect and renew your spirit this week!
Creatures of habit and ritual do not generally react well to change. Oh, you should be with me when I cantor Sunday mass these days.
For those of you who aren’t Catholic (or are, but haven’t been to church in a length of time not to be judged or even discussed herein): there is a very set ritual of prayers we say during mass. Recently, the Church changed the words to some of those prayers. The whole Church. Every Catholic who goes to mass now has to say different words, no matter what country they’re in (presumably). It’s because Pope John Paul II years ago ordered a re-translation from the original language into all the languages of the world, because things strayed a bit too far from home and now not everyone was really saying the same thing. He spoke seven languages, so I guess he would know. And we’re all supposed to be saying the exact same thing. It’s about unity. One Church.
So anyway. The answer to a priest’s “The Lord be with you” used to be “And also with you.” Now it’s “And with your spirit.” We’ve been saying “And also with you” since 1963 when the Church ixnayed Atin-Lay, but now, holy hell, the words are different. We say “And with your spirit” no fewer than five times during a mass. For the first several weeks of the new translation, we took special care to remind people of this before mass started. It got to a point when sometimes we were practically yelling it.
~”The Lord be with you.”
~”AND WITH YOUR SPIRIT! I got it that time!”
I was incensed (haha, Catholic joke – get it? Incense?) when the most pious of our priests decided to sing a high mass a couple of weeks ago. No, high mass does not refer to too much incense. It’s when a bunch of the prayers are chanted. I actually gave him a dirty look when he started in. People weren’t comfortable with those chants before we changed all the words. Now, there’s absolutely no musical precedent for them. I don’t know what to sing. The people are all, “Uh, hey cantor, what do we do?” and I’m all, “Uhhh, just… wiggle your voice around a little.” I hope you’re happy, Father.
My music director wisely changed some of the prayers we sing to the new translation weeks ahead of time. The idea was that people would be comfortable with them by the time we got to the mandatory switch-over, and they’d sing them confidently.
False.
We’ve been doing the new music for three months now, and I still see all these people with their faces buried in the prayer cheat sheets. Where the music, which they know, is not written.
I don’t know why, but for a Church based entirely on believing what cannot be seen, these people have some serious trust issues.
I’m not even going to start on the Nicene Creed or how everyone panics every week because “maybe they changed the Lord’s Prayer, too.” (They didn’t.)
Catholics are accustomed not only to ritual but also to a certain rhythm. We have a way we say things, you know? A cadence. When they changed the words, the cadence got all screwed up and now nothing is said together. Which is ironic, given the purpose of changing the words. Now everything’s scattered all to hell, and it comes out sounding like, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive my roof under you, but only say the word and I shall heal my own soul or …something. *Cough.* And with your spirit?”
That bit gets said at the most important moment of the mass: the consecration. It’s the moment when the bread and wine is turned into the body and blood of Christ. This is a very holy moment. Which makes it an excellent time for Patrick, the deeply baritone and hard-of-hearing usher/sacristan, to hock up a crapload of phlegm on the other side of the altar wall, very loudly, out of sight, like the Voice of God has been stricken by post-nasal drip. He does it at the exact same time every week.
Priest: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father,–”
Patrick (off): “Aaachhhuugggllll!”
Priest: “–almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.For he assumed at his first coming the lowliness of human flesh, and so fulfilled the design you formed long ago, and opened for us the way to eternal salvation–”
Patrick (off): “AAAYYYYAACHHHHUUUGGGGLLLLL. Uh-gull-accchhhh.”
Priest: “–that, when he comes again in glory and majesty and all is at last made manifest, we who watch for that day may inherit the great promise in which now we dare to hope.”
(I don’t have that memorized. I looked it up. I had the old prayer there memorized. But that’s gone the way of the backward-facing celebrant.)
Sadly, another fairly regular ritual at my church is the Fainting of the Faithful. The vast majority of attendees are seniors. And, God love them, sometimes they don’t have breakfast, or they forget to take a pill, or whatever, and boom. Down goes Mrs. Frazier. It’s happened so frequently that the parish has had to mark off a little connecting road between two parking lots with orange cones so that nobody (read: me) parks along the side of it because, if they do, the ambulance can’t get through.
I almost parked there yesterday, in defiance, because I was late and I really hate having to drive to the lower lot and hoof it up the hill to get to the church, out of breath just in time to sing the entrance hymn. Good thing I didn’t park there, though, because all of a sudden, right at the very beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist (the part leading up to that all-important moment of the consecration)… down went poor old Mr. McKinley.
I made that up, I don’t know his name.
Father saw it happen, and, when he finished the prayer he was on, he discreetly asked for any medical professionals present to attend to this parishioner. Apparently I worship at a very medical church. About six people rushed over. Had the choir been there, three more would have joined them. My church is, for reasons both spiritually and practically obvious, a pretty good place to lose consciousness.
This is always a very awkward thing for the celebrant. He has to continue with the mass. But he kind of doesn’t want to. He feels like he’s plainly ignoring the fact that one of his parishioners may or may not be dying about 20 feet away. Yesterday, because Mr. McKinley’s episode went on for so long, he calmly told the server girls as they prepared the altar for the consecration to go and get the other priest over in the rectory.
I remained prone, remembering I’m supposed to be an example up here in my lay ministry, kneeling as Saint Peter or whomever told us to do, but wondering what was taking the ambulance so long. They’re right across the street. Naturally, half the church was basically staring at the spot where Mr. McKinley had keeled over instead of paying much attention to that most holy of liturgical ceremonies, and I have to say that, as I watched the priest, he was a little distracted, too. It’s good, though, kind of, because it distracted everyone from Patrick’s lung evacuations. And then, of course, the medics arrived exactly when the bread and wine were elevated for the big moment. (Former Catholics: think “ringing bells.”) You cannot pick a worse time to be disruptive.
(left): “Sir, are you having trouble breathing?”
(from altar): “Through Him, with Him, in Him…” (off): “Ayyyucchhhhgggllll!” (left): “Any chest pain?” (from altar): “In the unity of the Holy Spirit…”
(off): “Bllluuugrrrghhuhgglll…”
Adding to all of this? The words to the hymn we sang at closing. “Let All Things Now Living.” Really? Oh, this is awkward. “Let all things now living (I hope) a song of thanksgiving to God our creator triumphantly raise! Whose passion has made us, protected and stayed us by guiding us on to the end of our days! (Which is hopefully not today)… Til shadows have vanished and darkness is banished as onward we travel from light into light!” (Go toward the light!)
I don’t know what happened to Mr. McKinley. The medics carted him off just before it was time to line up for Communion, with Father Pious High Mass tagging along.
I wonder if the prayers for the Anointing of the Sick changed, too.
The twelfth day of Christmas is the feast of the Epiphany in the Catholic Church. And I had one.
I finally. Got. Wi-fi.
Epiphany!
Yes, that’s right. Since I moved into this place, 16 months ago, I have been chained to the modem via etherlink connection. The modem is in the only possible place it can be – on the floor next to the TV/cable box in my living room. Which meant I had to be on the floor to use the computer.
Yeah.
For the longest time, it was because they were supposed to set up wi-fi when they installed my cable, but they didn’t, and I just never called them to come back and do it because who wants to call the cable company and invite them over again? And then, one of my coworkers looked at me like I had three heads and said, “Just go buy a router, for crying out loud!”
Oh. I can do that?
We are not terribly technologically savvy here at thesinglecell. I’m not an idiot or anything – I just thought the cable company had to provide the wi-fi service and if I hooked up something else they’d know and accuse me of breach of contract or something. I totally made that whole thing up in my head, though. Turns out.
So yesterday, I got a router. It wasn’t hard. I told an associate at the store what I wanted, she asked if I knew what kind I wanted, I said no, she said she’d send someone right over, I stood in the aisle for five minutes looking at boxes, nobody came, I picked one that looked reasonable (Belkin 300 N with dual something), paid for it and left. The hardest thing about installing it was finding a place to plug it in. And now, I’m on my couch, under a blanket, with the laptop where it was made to be… and I’m online.
It’s like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black and white to color.
Obviously, my regular readers have stuck with me through twelve days of the same title for my posts, except for one word that changed. I always celebrate the twelve days of Christmas. I don’t do pear trees or gold rings (note to self: find someone to supply gold rings for future Christmases) or drummers drumming, since they’d just make me nuts. But all my decorations stay up until the Epiphany, the celebration of the occasion when the three kings arrived at the stable to find the baby Jesus.
The little drummer boy may have been with them. I’m not sure.
Rembrandt's "Adoration of the Magi"
Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar brought the infant expensive gifts often given to kings, gifts that may have foreshadowed the path Jesus’ life and death would take: gold, because He was the newborn king; frankincense, which symbolized deity; and myrrh, an embalming oil associated with death. These days, two of those gifts are relatively obscure, and gold is no longer a gift fit only for kings. Most of the meaning has washed away.
It’s easy for us to forget the meaning of the little gifts we get on a daily basis. We are not royalty, not deities. But this year, for the twelve days of Christmas, I wanted to be more mindful of those gifts I receive every day, and how valuable they are.
The first day: Family.
The second day: Love.
The third day: Self-awareness.
The fourth day: Friendship.
The fifth day: Health.
The sixth day: Wisdom (and humor).
The seventh day: Contentedness.
The eighth day: Music.
The ninth day: Fruits of labor.
The tenth day: Freedom.
The eleventh day: Little pleasures.
The twelfth day: Connection.
By no means are these the only gifts I receive daily. There are so many more. Writing about these made me grateful for them, mindful of them. I hope I can continue that throughout the year.
Today, the decorations come down and get put away, and I yank a big, beautiful tree through a doorway nowhere near wide enough for it to pass through. After a considerable amount of vacuuming, my home goes back to its 11-month state, feeling bare and stark for a few days at first. I’ll consider keeping the Dickens Village houses out, at least, with their warm glow and old-world charm. And then I’ll decide, like I always do, that I might as well pack them away now so I don’t have to rejigger all the boxes in storage again when I eventually take them down.
The eighth day of Christmas should have been sparkly and shiny and new. I should have woken up to find that all kinds of things were different and everything was positive and diamonds had rained down from the sky during the night. The eighth day of Christmas was New Year’s Day, and none of that crap happened.
None of it.
It was sunny, though, which was good for my fuzzy head. No, it was not fuzzy from a night of partying. (See previous post.) My head tends to get a little cottony on New Year’s Day, I think precisely because I expect things to be different and they’re totally not, except there’s a whiff of some sort of expectation in the air and everybody’s off and I get the feeling like everybody has something to do, and I feel bamboozled by the whole magic trick-that’s-not-really-a-trick. “Oh! Behold! A shiny new year!”
“Madeja look.”
New Year’s Day is a holy day in the Catholic church: the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The purpose is to honor the role Mary played in bringing about the salvation of the world. I’m not the most religious person – mild to moderate at best. But I am a cantor at my church, and I sang the noon mass. Just me, my favorite accompanist and the contemporary group, who showed up ready to really play. Music is an alive thing, breathing and morphing, and sometimes the group just doesn’t gel. But other times, it really gets into a groove. And the instruments tend to change from week to week, which keeps things fresh even though it’s mostly because someone flaked out and another person stepped up. (A violin this time!) As a singer, I get inspired by this kind of stuff – people who just know what they’re doing and don’t need much direction, who can look at the music and play, and elevate the experience without saying a word. When you’re Catholic and a music person and a good two decades younger than nearly all of the people you see in front of you, you will take every chance you get to change things up and get them out of the rut of the status quo. The people in the pews usually respond.
I think they respond because the music becomes a spiritual power boost, which everybody can use. It doesn’t have to be some big thing. It doesn’t have to scream “religion” or “God” or “miracle” at you. It can just be an old hymn you hear in a new way, by virtue, even, of where you do and don’t take a breath. Like reading a poem and not stopping your momentum at the end of a line. Oh! That’s what that means!
The mass was a minute from starting when I looked at the accompanist and pointed to sheet music that was sitting on top of the organ (which she wouldn’t play today – the contemporary group is more of a piano crew). “Are we doing this?” I mouthed.
“Oh! We can,” she mouthed back.
“Offertory?” I suggested. It’s the moment when the altar is prepared for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when the gifts are brought forward by parishioners. Technically, this piece is not liturgically correct to sing at that time, but it’s the only place to do it without making the mass longer. And nobody likes it when the mass is longer.
She nodded. “What key?”
“A-flat.”
The contemporary group zinged up the music enough that we were fairly enjoying ourselves from the beginning of the service, and I could tell the Frozen Chosen were, as well. Cantoring is like teaching, I think: you look out at a sea of dead faces and you’re trying to think of something that’s going to wake them up and bring light to their eyes. Music can do that if you play and sing it right. Even the old stuff. Plus it helps that we’re still in Christmas carols.
But when it came time for the Offertory, we took it down a notch. The contemporary group left their instruments. On the piano, the accompanist played the first few measures of Schubert, measures most people recognize very quickly. And I sang.
Ave Maria, gratia plena…
It is one of my favorite pieces to sing. The only trick is that it’s a bit of a pressure piece. It’s not something you sing all the time; it’s for special occasions. Weddings. Funerals. Feasts and solemnities of Mary. So when you do it, it has to be special.
It has to shine.
I sang the Ave Maria for my grandmother’s funeral in 2007. She had basically ordered me to do it, and I knew if I chickened out, or sang it badly, she would haunt me with murmured “That was nice, dear” sentiments that really meant, “I would have thought my eternal sendoff would be a bit better.” I was medicated and prayed to every saint I could think of for help as I climbed the stairs to the choir loft to sing it. I didn’t love how it went, but it was enough, thankfully, to keep my grandmother quiet.
I sang it for my sister’s wedding in 2002. Sister 2 played piano.
I sang it for my brother-in-law’s grandmother’s funeral two weeks ago. The family had requested it. They remembered it from the wedding.
It’s a piece that matters, that means something to people. A piece they close their eyes to. A piece that rings in their breath-filled chests when it’s over.
If you do it right.
For me, the only way to do it right is not to sing it myself. Rather, I have to open my mouth and let it come through me from somewhere else. Otherwise I worry too much about tempo and tone and where I can breathe, and it just doesn’t do. I run out of air, I go a little flat, I push a little. I make it about me, and it loses something. It loses shine.
On the eighth day of Christmas, I turned it all over to the gift I’ve been given instead of the brain I use, and I let it come through me instead of from me. I sang it for my grandmother all over again, for my sister and her husband, for his grandmother. The pews stilled. Eyes closed. My cottony head cleared.
On the third day of Christmas, I was decidedly uncharitable. Like, hellbound kind of uncharitable. The kind that makes you feel like a monster, but full of your own virtue at the same time. A smug b!&*h.
I have a dear friend who announced yesterday that she is expecting her fourth child. Obviously, it’s wonderful news. She is a very loving mother and she genuinely enjoys the ride.
The thing is… she’s underemployed, working maybe 20 hours a week and paid from her church’s fluctuating parsonage fund. Often, she takes the kids to work with her. She’s not considering changing jobs. Her husband is chronically and uncaringly unemployed. They get a lot of government assistance in a state that’s making serious cuts, and her retired, widowed mother-in-law supports them financially. As in, bought them their house and the house before it, as well as a lot of other help. Neither my friend nor her husband is disabled or ill, and they’re having this child on purpose; she had told us in September that they wanted a fourth. In her emailed announcement, she issued a post-script: “don’t say anything about this on Facebook. Mother-in-law is dead set against us having another baby, so we’re trying to keep it quiet until I’m through the second trimester. What grandmother wouldn’t want more?”
My jaw gaped. I nearly banged my head on my desk. I oozed frustration at my friend who I felt was ignoring the cold truth: that she is condemning her children to poverty without a plan or a will to lift them out of it, teaching them that it’s okay not to work, to take advantage of another person’s amazing generosity and discard their completely legitimate concerns so that you can do what you wish. And to deceive them for as long as possible so you don’t have to deal with their disappointment.
I don’t think I’m wrong. But I am kind of horrible for thinking all that about my friend. And for talking about it with the other three friends in our gang. On a conference call.
Yeah, I cringed when I typed it.
Also yesterday, Sister 1 sent out an email to about ten people including me, telling us all that she has to have a hysterectomy. I’ve expected this for about two years now, but reading the decision still broke my heart. She wanted a third child, to give Twin Nephs a younger sibling, but their existence is wondrous as it is; for her to have another would be a tremendous challenge, and delivering would push the limits of safety. She was willing. As much as I wanted her to be happy, and would have cherished another nephew or a niece, part of me wished she wouldn’t try.
Here’s where I become monstrous again. The email bothered me for reasons other than its sadness. I share all my sisters’ hurts and joys, and this one carries so many implications it’s hard to put it together right now. But Sister 1 has a tendency to send out mass emails detailing her reproductive difficulties at least twice a year, and with this one, of all of them, I found myself feeling annoyed.
It’s hard to understand that, isn’t it? I don’t even understand it, myself. I’ve been trying to figure it out for hours now. I think it bothered me that it was so long – even though I know that she needs to say what she wants to say. I think I was a little put off by the number of people who received it, even though I know she needed to say it all at once instead of ten times, like ripping off a bandage instead of prolonging the sting. And I felt – it’s terrible to say it – manipulated. She said she did not expect anyone to help, but “it sure will be difficult feeling so helpless for weeks with two four-year-olds running around. Again – we do not expect you to do anything. But don’t be surprised if we call…”
As if anyone who received this message – and especially her sisters – would do less than everything they could. She’d begun the message saying plainly that they would be reaching out for help. I felt unnecessarily played with the change-up. It wasn’t a matter of the way some people have a hard time asking for someone’s kindness. It seemed like something akin to martyrdom.
What a horrible thing to think in a situation like this.
But I do think it.
My sister and I are opposites in many ways; I’m intensely private, and she, frankly, tends to “over-share.” (Says the woman writing all this on a blog. Good thing I’m anonymous. And have precious few readers. Who are wonderful.) Faced with her situation, I’m sure I would tell those who love me. But it would be quite different. Maybe it’s that difference that contributed to my divergent emotions. Maybe a few other things I’ve noticed in recent months piled on. And maybe it’s partly that, as her big sister, there’s nothing I can do to fix what hurts. It’s not like I’ve never said or done things that were akin to martyrdom, too.
Sister 2, meanwhile, is still suffering the physical effects of a recent miscarriage, let alone the emotional. And also yesterday, another dear friend announced (on the immediate heels of Meg’s news) that she, too, is expecting. Her second, and very soon after the first; he’s 13 months old, and Angie and her husband did not want another one so soon. She is overwhelmed, still trying to get used to the unmet expectations she had for herself in the last year, still trying to settle in to the demands of motherhood. She’s not sure she can cope with having two so close together.
Sometimes I feel like I’m surrounded by reproduction trials and triumphs. I love babies, don’t get me wrong. But as someone who’s sitting it out, I swear, it overwhelms me sometimes. There are now four conversations I have to have today, and I have no idea what to say in any of them. My sisters’ heartaches and my friends’ intentions and fears have nothing to do with me, but they’re knocking me around anyway. Even my coworker is about to go on maternity leave and change the dynamic. I feel selfish for being affected by things that aren’t about me, for being a little irritated that a coworker’s baby changes my job, that she is the third coworker whose baby has changed my job in the last year. Aren’t I the woman who asked for details on the maternity leave policy at my last employer not because of my plans, but because I wanted to know how they treated women? Where’d she go? How did she get replaced by someone who judges her friend as white trash for choosing to have a fourth child in poverty, and her sister as having a martyr complex for sending a long mass email about her impending hysterectomy?
Late last night, as I was trying to work through this post (which took me forever to write), it occurred to me that Christians are celebrating a birth more than two thousand years ago that no one planned or predicted, that threatened the social and moral perception. We believe a virgin gave birth to the son of God. Mary, by historical theologian accounts, was probably all of 14 years old. If we go by scripture, she delivered the Son of Man in a manger stall after a hard trip on an animal’s back. And no matter how peaceful the picture is now, she had to have been completely baffled and terrified. Joseph, too. All their hopes, their ideas for their future, their plans, were all gone in the moment when Mary learned of God’s plan for her. I’m not so sure everyone else’s children are the result of a divine idea in such a direct manner. But on the third day of Christmas, it helped to remember that even Mary must have struggled with what motherhood and womanhood meant… and what they didn’t mean. For her, and for everyone else.
It is a strange thing, keeping vigil for a death that does not belong to you. The loved one of a loved one hovers between living and dying, and you sit hundreds of miles away and wait. The family gathers at the bedside and stares at monitors and the breathing man before them who is not there. And you are at home, at work. You are on your couch, at your desk. With your phone. Your email. Your Facebook account.
Waiting with them.
********
Friday, noon
Text, with Joey, who’s waiting for his flight to depart
Me: I am at the post office. There is an uber-gay, uber-skinny, uber-jewish guy in a yarmulke mailing, i kid you not, like 40 packages.
Joey: Are you crazy? Take a photo
Me: can’t. would be soooo obvious.
Joey: PLEASE
Me: I can’t. Already gone.
Joey: gay and orthodox?
Me: No sideburn curls, so conservative or orthodox. he’s a RAIL. benji. i’d guess 26, tops.
Joey: if he’s a redhead get his #
******
Friday, evening
Text, with Joey, at the hospital
Joey: Ugh
hospital vigil
tubes are out
we wait
Me: I can’t find the best words to ask how you are
Joey: Very tough
but we are going to survive
Me: Yes, you will. and there will be happy days, and there will be joyful days. I have, no kidding, 50 people working on making that happen… just in case.
Joey: we need it
Me: no shit
you have my entire church choir (grandparents, all but 4 of them) and whatever random people get the prayer requests from the online form
jack, my sisters, my mother, for the love
my mother is praying for your family from ireland, by the way. we’ve spanned the globe!
Joey: nice
and efficient
Me: It’s all I can do
Joey: that is plenty
********
I slept with my phone beside me, inches from my hand so that I could snatch it immediately as any message or call came in. I slept in fits and starts, every waking moment wondering. Did I have it right? The circumstances? The condition? Joey, if not his whole family, had left the hospital to go back to the house. Michael’s blood pressure was up, his breathing was shallow. But he was still here. Only not really here.
Still. Waiting.
********
Saturday, 8:30am
Text, with Angie
Angie: FUCK, that’s early!
Me: ?
Angie: Did u get joey’s text that the funeral is Monday at 11?
Me: No. did it say anything else?
Angie: Nope. Just funeral is monday at 11. Meg got it too.
Me: You know, I admire Mary Ann’s efficiency, but come on.
Angie: Right? Ouch. Hey, she’s got a busy week; things to do!
********
I could not stop thinking about Michael, about Joey, about their mother, Mary Ann. As I sat before my computer, trying to be productive, I found myself wandering to Michael’s Facebook page. Friends had been posting messages for days. I traced them back to the day of the accident. Hopeful posts full of cheery words of encouragement and casual affection. Full of the expectation that Michael would one day wake and read this page, laugh at the inside jokes, the Super Bowl predictions made before game one of the regular season. And then, a slight shift. More sadness. Posts about how much he was loved. It reminded me of those vigils on the news, for teenagers at high schools, dead from some similar tragedy. Posterboards full of pink-inked messages and hearts drawn between them. Thursday night, a benefit, hastily arranged with auction items and two live bands, held at the bar where Michael worked. By Friday, Michael’s page was just heartbreaking. A girl, Sara — the most frequent poster all along, professing how much she loved her friend, telling him he has to pull through, telling him she can’t wait for him to wake up and see how much he’s loved.
At the end of the day, she posted again. “I’m fucking begging you,” she said.
I was frustrated by these messages for reasons it seems unkind to explain. I wanted these friends to understand that Michael was not coming back, that their posts on his page may only magnify the pain his family was feeling. I knew that their messages would serve as a kind of guest book. I understood their hurt, but I wanted them to stop hoping. They seemed so young. They didn’t seem to know that sometimes hope is the unkindest thing of all.
My eyes kept going to Sara’s photo. Michael is in it with her. I don’t even know this girl and I’m worried about how she’ll take this. She loves him. It is clear from just a few words in a handful of posts scattered between other people’s sentiments that she loves him. I later learned that she had been his girlfriend until two months before.
********
Saturday, late morning
Text, with Angie, Meg and Will:
Me: Joey just called. he’s totally annoyed with Michael. “you’re just draaaagging it out, aren’t you?” he’s saying his bp is up, breathing is shallow but because his heart is strong he can hold out for a while. apparently there’s a plan to stick w/monday if he dies by 5pm. omfg, right? it’s about the obit deadline. oh, and grandma fell on her face yesterday and is all bruises. joey called her a drama queen.
Meg: Wow. I don’t think there are words. Um… so, exactly what should we be praying for now?
********
Joey couldn’t sit in Michael’s room on Saturday. He told me during a phone call that he’d sat there for six hours Friday. “It’s awful. I’m staring at him, and then I’m looking at the monitor: ‘Oh, look, the line changed.’ ‘Oh, it’s down to 27.’ ‘Oh, now it’s 50.’ And then I look at Michael. “
I thought of my uncle, and how we had done the exact same thing, how staring at the monitors and almost willing the lines to flatten had felt like such a maudlin thing to do. How wondering, every time he exhaled and held still, whether he had taken his last breath. And then he would take another.
“He’s not there,” Joey told me. “I know it. He’s just… this isn’t him. He’s gone.”
********
Saturday, early afternoon
Text, with Sister 2
Sister 2: So, do you think there’s a trip to Ohio in your near future?
Me: well, i’ve already booked an early am flight monday, return tues afternoon, rental car and hotel. so this whole michael not quite dying thing is a bit awkward now.
Sister 2: Hahaha. Oh man. That’s what u get for being proactive.
Me: this is the problem with joey’s mother’s efficiency. she doesn’t mess around. she’s done this before and she wants it over. so she set the funeral for monday @11a. but now it’s like, “michael, you have to die by 5p or we’ll miss the obit deadline for the paper and we’ll have to postpone your funeral.” rude.
Sister 2: Oh my goodness. I thought u just assumed when it would be or something. That is so totally awkward.
Me: it really is. as i was booking it i was kind of like, “what if…?” so now it’s all, “So, like, uh… what’s your deal?” and michael’s fb page is a disaster. i can’t look anymore.
Sister 2: people saying their final goodbyes via fb?
Me: some goodbye, some hang on you can do this, some begging… it’s also odd b/c he’s 32 but a lot of these people seem younger.
Me (2): and joey says people are sending condolences and then coming back saying they didn’t realize he hadn’t died, maybe there’s a chance, woohoo, and joey’s like, “he’s brain dead. stop.”
Sister 2: Huh. That’s terrible. I’d stop reading that pronto.
Me: and so I did. also I just realized i accidentally sent that last msg to joey instead of you. so that’s awesome.
Sister 2: I am leaning on the washing machine guffawing at your misfortune. and what did your follow up to him say? so sorry, am letting my sister know how things are going… awkward death vigil emoticon?
Me: I thought about sending an oops sorry text but then i thought, “screw it.” i’m leaving it alone. fortunately i did NOT send him the one that I sent to angie and meg in which I quoted will: “next time, wait til he’s dead.”
********
Saturday, 5:00pm
Text, with Angie
Angie: aaaaand TIME.
Me: you are seriously not right.
Me(2): it’s like you put an expiration date on his expiration date. that said… I’m hovering over “cancel trip” on travelocity…
Angie: Ooh. Can they do a full refund? Just got Joey’s text.
Me: why am I not getting these mass texts he’s sending? what does it say?
Angie: FWD: “No change… We are in limbo and it’s exhausting and sucks. Funeral will be Tuesday at the earliest now… stay tuned.”
********
The internet can completely confuse any situation with its information. I looked up “brain death” and searched for a credible source. I was wondering what part of the brain controls heart rate and breathing. The information I read told me that if his heart was beating and his lungs taking air (however shallowly), he technically was not completely brain dead.
Which was awful news, in a terribly twisted way.
I wondered. When Mary Ann and the doctors agreed it was best not to reinsert the feeding tube, had they done something merciful, or had they missed their chance? If the latter, a chance at what? Was there valor in preserving life that couldn’t live in hopes of a miracle, or just a clearer conscience? Suddenly life teetered on a thin line not of breath and beat, but of liquefied nourishment, withheld. What would take its toll first: the relative lack of oxygen in lungs inhaling but not filling, slowly dissipating in his blood, slowly shutting down his functions? Or starvation and dehydration? Which was crueler? Without consciousness, without cognition, was either cruel at all?
********
Saturday evening
Facebook, with Joey
Joey: so over it
Me: I know honey
Joey: exhausted
and cranky
we cleaned out his room and such
my family is exhausted
Me: it will be over eventually
there will be an end to this part
Joey: Blah
a mother in law lasted TEN DAYS
Me: WHOSE mother-in-law?!
Joey: some woman
********
Text, with Angie, Meg and Will
Me: FYI, i cancelled the arrangements i booked. will rebook when we KNOW plans. i’m fb chatting w/joey… he’s “over it” and @ home eating pasta.
Meg: Oh my. if he has resorted to carbs, it must be bad.
*******
Text, with Sister 2
Me: So… michael has missed his print deadline. :-/ i’ve cancelled the trip i booked on travelocity (full refund – woot!) and i will rebook when we know for sure.
Sister 2: I was so totally just wondering how to word my question about whether or not he made the obit print deadline. Hooray for full refunds. Is joey texting u frequently or infrequently right now
Me: we’re fb chatting. he’s “over it.” he went back to the house to eat pasta. (he never eats pasta.) Ps don’t worry about wording. angie texted me at EXACTLY 5:00 and said “aaaaand TIME.” last night she asked me if we had an “official lights out” yet.
Sister 2: So, recap. Joey had another bro who already died? or am i making that up? and michael and how many sisters
Me: okay, here’s the tree. mary ann and ed had joey, michael and emily. they divorced early 80s. mary ann married tom mid-80s. his wife had committed suicide in ’82. he had melanie and jacqueline. mary ann and tom had david together. tom was an abusive alcoholic who shot himself in the head in 2001. david, who was 13 or 14 at the time, found him. he lingered for 5 days before they took him off life support. david was killed in a car accident in november 2010, three days after melanie got engaged. michael’s accident was four days before her wedding. his pneumonia set in on her wedding day and that’s what spiked the pressures, swelled his brain and led to the stroke. meanwhile, jacqueline and melanie are fighting mary ann over their father’s trust. and then there’s joey and emily.
Sister 2: I’m going to pitch their family story to Lifetime. They’re dropping like flies.
Me: we’ve decided that mary ann is basically the heroine of a steinbeck novel.
Sister 2: how do we feel about melanie’s marriage? seems cursed. and the fighting over the trust… so this is super awkward.
Me: oh it’s super-duper awkward. joey doesn’t believe jackie and melanie would have initiated the legal battle if david hadn’t died b/c he had a vote too and would not have allowed it. they started it just weeks after he died. see, melanie’s new dad-in-law is a lawyer.
Sister 2: I need to see this in a diagram of some sort
Me: took me years to get it right.
********
The way we love our friends is sometimes more powerful than the way we love our family members. It is not a matter of intensity, or depth, or sincerity. It is a matter of movement, of ache, and the odd frustration of not sharing fully in the grief, and therefore not knowing how much right we have to feel it. It was natural but disconcerting, being so consumed with thoughts of Michael when I had barely been choked up at the death of my father’s uncle two weeks before. Sitting with this, I understood that this was simply, and horribly, a case of too much suffering for a dear friend and his family, and two young men gone far too soon. My great-uncle was 87. Joey’s brothers had been 24 and 32.
I could not sleep.
********
Loss
Sunday 9:40am
Text, while I am en route to church to sing at a 9/11 memorial Mass:
Joey: Michael died at 8:30am this morning. Funeral is Tuesday.
********
I cannot cry, because I have to sing. I turn off the 9/11 memorial services playing on the radio. Later, I do cry, but it’s after church, and I am not quite sure whether I am crying for Michael and Joey’s family, or for thousands of others.
********
Joey and I spoke for a while on the phone that afternoon. He told me he’s sort of angry at Michael for dying on the anniversary of 9/11. Now his family can’t even own the day; it’s overshadowed, upstaged by national memorial events. I told Joey his feelings remind me of an interview I heard on NPR the other day, with a woman who lost her husband on 9/11. She feels that it’s odd and intrusive that the whole nation puts her through the day all over again every year. It’s such a deeply personal loss, to lose your husband, and the whole country claims him as their own. It takes away. “I find ‘Never forget’ to be a sort of odd thing,” she said. “If you want to move on, you have to forget.”
Joey, as a New Yorker, will forever be conflicted about how to grieve that day.
Joey said he thinks Michael and David are deeply upset by the Steelers’ loss. He’s sure it’s ruined their reunion plans for the day. He knows I don’t like the Steelers. “Don’t bring that up when you’re here,” he said.
“No, I won’t. There’s already been enough tragedy without me bringing up the Steelers.”
********
Sunday, late afternoon
Facebook, with Joey
Joey: Was it gauche to ask the girls to bring ice cream?
Me: Absolutely not. I love your specificity.
Joey: Um, YEAH
last thing I need is to waste the opportunity on some weird flavor
Though the sweet corn and blueberry is amazing.
Me: I’ve heard about that. And something with lavender…?
Joey: Oh, the lavender honey is delish
and odd
less of an ice cream and more of an apertif
Me: an amuse bouche
Joey: EXACTLy
I think I am going back on Wednesday
so I can celebrate my birthday at the beach
Me: ah, good man. I wondered what you’d do about your birthday.
Joey: I love it when you talk like Judi Dench.
Me: There is nothin’ like a dame.
Joey: MA is very much “back to normal.” Plus our limit is five days. It gets ugly.
Me: I hear ya. How is your father?
Joey: Oy. He’s driving me insane. He’s trying to chase down an urn. He’s OBSSESSED.
********
Minutes later
Phone call
“You are NOT staying in that hotel. It’s FOUL,” Joey declared at me.
“Joey, I know, but–”
“No. We’re not having it. You’re coming here. You’ll stay at the neighbors’.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Mrs. Baker is a little put-out. She thought the others would be staying so she’s done all this work and now she wants a houseguest.”
“Well, if you–”
“My mother wants to talk to you.”
Oh, God. I haven’t offered condolences and she’s going to light right in to why I shouldn’t stay at the hotel. Don’t put her on the phone. ”Jo–”
The phone is handed over.
“You are NOT staying in that hotel, that’s ridiculous. We have plenty of room. Come here. That way when we party all night tomorrow night you don’t have to drive back to that horrible hotel. Really. A hotel? Stay here.”
“Well… if you want me to stay there, I appreciate it. I just wanted to give the family room,” I tried to explain.
“We have TONS of room!” came from Joey in the background.
“We have plenty,” Mary Ann agreed. “You won’t be with us. You’ll be at the neighbors’. It’s silly. Stay here. You’re staying here. That’s it. Cancel that awful hotel.”
********
Funeral
The night before the service, when I rang the bell at the lake house, I could hear Joey excitedly declaring my arrival through the panes of glass along the side of the front door. He wrapped me in a tight hug as soon as he opened it and thanked me for coming. Mary Ann mirrored her only remaining son’s reaction to my presence.
At the table in the expansive kitchen were three sets of neighbors, and Mary Ann’s partner, George. Introductions were made with those I had not met before. I was the first friend of my generation to arrive. They fed me. Grandma came, and was hard to look at; the way her injuries had settled themselves in her 86-year-old skin after her fall had left her entire face purpled and greened, from forehead to jawline, on both sides of her nose and all the way across to her temples. But she was smiling right up to her eyes behind scratched glasses.
Around the table, stories. Wine and laughing. So much food. Life, in stop-animation, with the understanding that it would go on, however heavily, after this. I kept looking at Joey and Michael’s sister Emily, who looked so much like Michael. She was the youngest, since David had died. I kept wondering, as she sat quietly listening and smiling, how she would do from now on with this grief. Mary Ann said a family friend, who is a doctor, had looked at Michael’s CT scans from between the bicycle accident and the stroke he suffered as a result of the injuries and pneumonia. “It was bad from the beginning,” Mary Ann said. “There was too much damage. We made the right choice.” It almost sounded like she did not need to convince herself.
Will arrived, toting a hundred pictures of the five of us friends from college, which were shared around the table. Then he, Joey and I went down to stand on the dock that jutted into the lake from the backyard. In the glow of the light from the house, we talked about the fight over the trust fund, and cast the movie version of the memoir Joey was now sure to write.
In the morning, in the Bakers’ kitchen, Mrs. Baker fed me breakfast casserole and good coffee and we talked about the unbelievable tragedies that had befallen our dear friends’ family. “We’re all so close,” she told me as she described the history of this nestled side of the big lake, houses propped next to each other separated by mere feet. She told me how, when everyone’s kids were young, there were community meals, dinners shared all together, almost every night, breakfasts almost every morning, each neighbor taking a turn until it cycled back around again. She told me how her son Nathan had been so close with David, how they had grown up together, and how he had an interview for medical school two months after David had died.
“The interviewer asked him, ‘So when you go home, what are you going to tell your best friend about this day?’” The tears came quickly and her throat closed, and she needed a moment before she could continue. “Nathan couldn’t even speak to answer the question.” She wiped her eyes. “That was the worst,” she said, mostly to herself.
She told me how angry she was at Melanie and Jacqueline. She said Mary Ann had told her two nights before, “A year ago, I had six kids. Now, it looks like I only have two.”
But the day was beautiful and the lake was sparkling, and the funeral service was just as one should be. It was hopeful, it spoke of joy far more than sorrow, of gratitude far more than pain. Joey eulogized his brother perfectly, but worked in a very pointed reference to Michael’s valued preference for family harmony – a sentence for which he leveled a steely gaze directly at Melanie and Jacqueline, who had called relatives to explain their side of the fight before the funeral; who ha arrived minutes before the service and who left immediately following, with their husbands. I had spotted Sara among the large crowd of mourners, her eyes swollen and red. I wanted to hug her and tell her I was heartbroken for her, a girl at a loss for where to sit in a world that seemed to have crumbled so quickly for her. The church, it was noted, in some ways resembled a teepee, which was a fitting representation on this occasion, given Michael’s deep passion for Native American history. There were windows all around the sanctuary, and we seemed to be celebrating Michael’s life in the middle of nothing but trees. Angie and Meg had arrived from their long drives a few minutes before the Mass began, and the happy sounds of Meg’s 10-month-old daughter echoed in the church.
After the luncheon, those closest to the family went back to the lake house. In the soothing breeze of a September day, in the sunlight that bathed the lake and the lawn, there was serenity. Friends sat circled. We five occupied steps and lawn space, the first time we had actually all been in the same place at the same time since Angie’s wedding seven years ago. As I walked into the house to gather my belongings and begin my goodbyes so I could make my way to my flight, I turned back and saw my college friends, framed by the French doors, backed by the shimmering water. “You’re not leaving,” Joey mouthed at me – a gentle restraint rather than a question or a complaint. And I wished I didn’t have to. Despite 16 years of friendship, this was the first true glimpse I had at our future, at knowing that we would do this again and again for each other.
“You know how to find us now,” Mary Ann’s partner, George, said to me, his hand on my arm. “Will you find us again?” I told him I hoped I would.
“Joey needs…” he searched for a word. “Support. Is that a good word?” I nodded. “We weren’t nearly over David,” he finished. “Not nearly over David, when this happened.” And for the dozenth time, I had no idea what I could possibly say that would sound at all graceful or right.
As I drove to the airport, the song that had been playing over and over in my head since Sunday returned. I had seen James Taylor perform it in a brief amount of coverage I allowed myself to watch of the 9/11 memorial in New York. It is a song that ruins me on a good day, for reasons I have never understood. On Sunday, with the weight of sadness that comes from the indelible memory of the attacks and Michael’s death compounding it, the song seemed fitting and absolute. I will never hear it again without thinking of Michael, and of the gut-wrenching event now known simply as September Eleventh. But I hope I will also think of a sun-drenched home on a sparkling lake, and a day when love between family and friends was as tangible as the grass on which we sat, in honor of a young man who deserved his own remembrance. And I hope, through the sadness, I will smile.
The hurricane of two weeks ago has apparently given way to monsoon season. But the pouring rain and all-day gray seem appropriate, because Irene seems to have ushered in a whole series of heartbreaking news. It’s so strange how that happens, isn’t it? Everything goes along fine, the usual little dips here and there but nothing dramatic, and then bam— too many sad things to process. Twin Nephs’ first babysitter died on September 2 from leukemia. She was in her late 50s. The news hit hard, as we understood that she was doing better. Her illness was the reason she had to stop watching Twin Nephs, little boys that she and her husband cared for from when they were three months old, boys they absolutely adored and hated to give up to someone else’s care. Her death preceded the tenth anniversary of my 55-year-old uncle’s death from leukemia by one day. It trailed word that a coworker in his late 40s has been diagnosed with leukemia by about four days.
How does that happen?
The bit of news that far preoccupies my mind right now is what’s happening with my dear friend Joey‘s family. They’ve always been given to dramatic heartbreak: divorce, suicide, complicated dynamics. Last November, Joey’s stepsister Melanie got engaged. Three days later, their youngest brother, David, was killed in a car accident. He was 24. Just a couple weeks after that, Melanie and her sister, Jacqueline, opened up a contentious legal battle with Joey’s mother, their stepmother, over the trust she oversaw after their father committed suicide 11 years ago. Joey doesn’t believe they would have done it if David were alive; David was the girls’ half-brother, sharing the same father. He had a vote, and Joey says he would never have allowed it. It has put Joey squarely in the middle, trying to preserve the relationship between his mother, himself, and the women he has called his sisters for nearly 30 years. It has gotten so contentious that the girls won’t speak to his mother. Not even at Melanie’s wedding this past Saturday.
Days before the wedding, on Wednesday, Joey’s 30-year-old brother, Michael, was hit by a truck while riding his bicycle home from the bar where he worked. The greatest injury was to his head, but the swelling in his brain decreased on its own and he was responding to painful stimuli while in a medically induced coma to quiet his brain activity and give him a chance to heal. The stimuli were working on every part of his body, so paralysis did not appear to be a possible outcome. We all believed he would recover. It might take time, but he would be alright. This family couldn’t possibly be made to endure more.
But Saturday – the day of Melanie’s wedding – Michael contracted pneumonia. His fever spiked his pressures and his brain swelled out of control. Sunday morning, surgeons removed part of his skull to allow for the swelling. On Monday, he had a CT scan to see how things were going post-op, and when the results came back, doctors discovered Michael had had a massive stroke sometime between the surgery and the scan.
The doctors say there is no hope of Michael regaining function. He is no longer responding to any stimuli. He is unable to breathe on his own. If he survives, he will be permanently vegetative. The family will make a decision tomorrow about life support.
Joey didn’t get the news until he landed back home in New York.
My dear friend is about to lose his second brother in less than a year. His mother is about to lose her second son, while she grapples with losing, in a different way, the girls she raised after their own mother committed suicide 30 years ago.
It’s far, far too much.
When he asked me for a reason on the phone yesterday, I could give him none. When he asked if God had a plan, all I could do was tell him I don’t believe in a God who does this to people on purpose. All I could do was tell him that we don’t find God in the tragedy; we find Him in the support of our friends and family when that tragedy occurs.
It seemed nowhere near enough comfort to give.
Joey and I are part of a very tight group of friends. When David died, he told us not to come. He felt it would be overwhelming, dealing with family and us there. He thought he would want to spend time with all of us and wouldn’t be able to, and that would upset him, and it was best if we didn’t come. But this time, he told me in great sobs, he’s calling in the chips. If there is a funeral, he wants us there. He said he doesn’t think he can do it this time.
And there was nothing I could say, other than, “We’ll be there.”
It’s not enough.
I think about how I would be if I lost one of my sisters, let alone two. I mean no exaggeration when I say I’m certain I would be on the floor for days. I would never, ever be the same. I would lose whole parts of me. I think of my friend, six years sober, just now beginning to realize how angry he is about the circumstances of his family’s life together and apart, feeling at once terrible and relieved to live hundreds of miles from them. When David died, it was the distance that helped him feel like he could move on. But it made him feel guilty, too. And now with Michael in a state of suspension, he’s struggling to figure out what to hope for… too anguished to think of a life without his brother, and too humane to think of keeping him alive without hope of recovery. He’s worried about his mother. He’s furious with his sisters.
And there is no reason for any of it.
But outside my window, all of it is more than reason enough for the rain.
Have you ever wished you had a camera at a funeral?
My father’s uncle, Larry, died last week, peacefully in his sleep at the age of 87. I’m glad somebody in my family got to go like that; it’s not usually the way things work for my people. My parents were unable to make the trip for the funeral, but Tuesday night, after work, I headed to my sister’s house, crashed for a few hours and then went to the service Wednesday morning.
You have to understand my family in order to understand the way we do funerals. There are a few key words:
Irish
Catholic
Big
Loud
Honest
Lively
Completely inappropriate in almost every possible way
Alright, so that last item was several words unto itself. But they’re probably the most key keywords.
So somehow we all managed to arrive at the church at the exact same time, coming at each other in all different directions to centralize in the parking lot. Within seconds, at least five people were standing in the middle of that lot, in mourning clothes, eating soft pretzels. This is Philadelphia’s version of breakfast. And the pretzels were warm, so it qualifies as gourmet.
Generally speaking, when we all get together for funerals, we start reminiscing about other family members’ funerals. This gathering was no different, and before long we were waxing nostalgic for that time in 1994 when my father’s cousin Diana was killed in a car accident. Diana was Uncle Larry’s daughter. She was… um… not small. My father, his two brothers, two of their male cousins and three other grown men were pallbearers. None of them are small men, but between Diana’s size and their limited ability to move when they were all in place, they struggled to get the casket where it needed to go. In fact, they almost dropped her once. My youngest uncle, Joe, recounted his reaction when everyone arrived for Diana’s burial Mass.
“I wasn’t playin’ around,” he told us Wednesday morning as he held part of a pretzel. When he’d sized up Diana’s coffin, he had known enough about physics to voice a preferred position in the honored cadre of men. “I pointed at that casket, I said, ‘I call middle,’” he laughed.
His cousin’s husband, Carl, cracked up. “You ass,” he said. “You stuck me on an end!” (Carl, being an in-law, is of a somewhat less bullish build.)
“Damn right I did!” Uncle Joe crowed, polishing off the last of his breakfast.
“You missed the night before, at the viewing,” I told Carl. “Uncle Joe and my dad, standing at the back of the funeral home next to each other, staring at Diana, talking out the sides of their mouths to each other: ‘How we gonna do this?’”
Uncle Joe broke up again with laughter. Choking on carbs, he painted a clearer picture. “We didn’t think they’d even be able to close the casket.”
Carl rolled his eyes and nodded with a groan as if to say, “I hear ya.”
“And then,” I said, “I was up kneeling on the prie-dieu with Dad, and he bumped her arm. All he saw was, her arm moved. And he opened one eye at me–” I gave the proper look, one eye wide, the other closed, the beginnings of terror evident– “I had to tell him, ‘Dad, you bumped her. You bumped her arm.’ Dad goes” — I dropped my voice low and quiet, sotto voce, and barely moved my lips – “‘Are you sure?’” Back to my normal voice, I finished. ”I said, ‘Yes, Dad, you bumped her arm. What, you think she’s moving?’”
Howling from Uncle Joe and my dad’s oldest brother, Jim. It wasn’t just because my dad wasn’t there to defend himself. He would have been mocked if he were there, too. But he also would have been joining in.
“Remember Aunt Beth standing outside?” Sister 1 asked me. Did I. Because Diana had been killed in a car accident, certain modifications had to be made at the funeral home. No one would have known that if it weren’t for Aunt Beth standing outside, telling everyone as they walked in for the viewing, “Don’t touch her head. Don’t touch her head.” To some people who couldn’t help but throw a curious look her way, she drew an oval around her forehead with her finger and broadly mouthed “wax” with a grimace.
(You’re welcome for that image. I’ll spare you the story I got to hear later about an Italian guy whose mother, in her dramatic sorrow, lifted his head up off the casket’s pillow. You don’t want to know.)
After twenty minutes of eating and clowning around in the parking lot while our dearly departed uncle lay in blessed repose inside, we decided we should probably act like grown-ups and go in. The funeral director had brought Uncle Larry over from the funeral home for a final calling hour before the Mass began. Greeting scattered relatives as we passed by them, we worked our way to the back of the church where the casket stood, open. But before you get to the body, you have to peruse the obligatory photo collage.
Oh dear.
Uncle Larry had some outfits.
In one photo, he and his late wife, Aunt Gennie, were wearing matching clothes. His shirt and her dress were both excruciatingly loud orange and brown patterns. They were reclining on a twin bed. The color that had faded from the photo – which I’m putting at a good 45 years old – did little to dampen the visual assault. Below that photo were two snapshots of Uncle Larry seemingly surrounded by snow. It was piled well above his head. He wore a fur-lined hat, with the front of the hat folded up so the lining showed. He was hunkered down and appeared to be in winter military dress, which would put this photogenic moment in the era of World War II. In his left arm, he cradled, of all things, a black and white cat.
“How the hell did he find a cat in all that snow?” Carl asked, but I was already on to a family dinner photo - you know, the ones where everyone gathers at one end of the table – which not only featured Uncle Larry in a hugely plaid button-down shirt, but also a far hairier version of Carl in a tight and fuzzy v-neck.
“This is a flattering shot of you, Carl,” I directed his attention to the mustachioed, long-haired guy who had morphed into a present-day man shaved bald in every place north of his shoulders.
“Yeah, those were my porn star days,” Carl quipped.
“Oh my God, what the hell is that?!” came from Carl’s left. Another cousin, and she was pointing at a photo in the upper right corner of the poster board. It was Uncle Larry, shirtless (please God, only shirtless), in a red, heart-shaped tub full of bubbles. Some of them were piled on top of his bald head. (Uncle Larry never did have hair. The only picture I’ve ever seen in which he had hair was the one taken of him, my grandmother and their youngest sister when Uncle Larry was probably four.)
At first I wondered why Aunt Gennie wasn’t in that bubbly tub shot (which I guessed had been taken in the Poconos), but then again, I was glad; Lord only knows what would have been going on in that picture, and this was church, after all. Cackling from the “mourners” in the back notwithstanding.
Directly below that photo was a shot of dear old bald and portly Uncle Larry in his best tux. By which I mean his only tux. I believe the event was his late daughter Sara’s wedding sometime in the latter part of the ’70s. (Yes, Uncle Larry and Aunt Gennie lost both of their daughters young; Sara had severe diabetes and died in 2001 when she was about 50). The tux featured a shirt so ruffled down the front that it looked more like a costume. The ruffles were edged in black piping.
My dad’s youngest sister, Anne, is the executor of the estate and power of attorney. She tells me that Uncle Larry wanted to be buried in that tux. Which means he still had it. She had told me on the phone shortly after his death that she and Uncle Jim were looking at two suit options, one of which had been purchased in 1956 and the other of which had been purchased in 1957. She wisely nixed the tux and had the funeral home put Uncle Larry in one of those black, loose-knit suits.
After I knelt at my great-uncle’s casket, said a prayer for his peaceful rest and took a good look at him (They never get the mouth right, I mused with disdain. People always say, “Oh, he looks so good!” but they never get the mouth right.), my eyes roamed over the sprays of flowers around him.
And then I saw it.
Uncle Larry spent every Sunday for the last decade in Atlantic City at the casinos. He’d ride a bus down, collect $20 in quarters from the tour company, eat the meal they fed him and play the slots all day. When I see seniors squandering away hours and prescription co-payment money sitting in front of a ca-chinging, blinging, dinging machine in a vast, windowless room with mirrored walls and hideously patterned carpet meant to make you forget what day or time it is, it makes me really sad. But Uncle Larry loved it. He did not miss a Sunday. And he did not care if someone in the family was being Christened, or making their First Communion, or having some other sort of party. There were no exceptions. If it was Sunday, Larry was in AC playing the slots. Invite him anyway if you want, but he ain’t comin’.
Days before the funeral, the florist had asked Aunt Anne, and Uncle Larry’s only grandchild, Patrick, if they wanted anything special. Jokingly, Patrick had asked, “Got a slot machine?”
And behold, I present unto thee…
Why yes, it IS a slot machine floral arrangement.
Yes. I took a picture at a funeral. I mean, somebody had to.
I left the body out. You’re welcome for that, too. If you’d like the layout (no pun intended), this gem of a floral creation was at the immediate foot of Uncle Larry’s casket.
My mouth dropped when I saw this thing and I looked at Aunt Anne.
“No.” I said flatly.
“Oh yeah,” she said, nodding. “Yep. It is.”
I looked at it more closely, taking in the details: the 7-7-7 on the roll, the spillover of floral silver coins coming through the mouth at the bottom of the machine. The only thing that would have made it better (and by “better” I mean “more horrifyingly, deliciously inappropriate”) would have been a swirling light on top and sound effects, and maybe a rig-up that made it sound off and spit out more floral silver coins every time Uncle Larry’s name was mentioned.
“Oh, I wish I had my camera,” I said. “Is that wrong?”
“Hell, no!” Aunt Anne replied, pointing at a cousin. “He took a picture. Do you have your phone? Post it on Facebook and tag me in it.”
I dug my phone (which I had respectfully turned off) out of my purse and snapped the shot. If my mother had been there, she would have chidingly said my name and tsked her tongue.
But my mother wasn’t there.
Neener neener neener.
The casket also featured one of those mesh-backed ball caps with the name of Uncle Larry’s favorite gambling establishment emblazoned on the front above a bill that had never been bent. I’d seen that red, white and blue cap perched on Uncle Larry’s head many times, hitting far above his brow so that the mesh left his bald head air-conditioned. The hat now lay at his feet, along with old framed photos of him with Aunt Gennie, Diana, Sara, Sara’s late husband Tom (Agent Orange vaccine, Vietnam: Hep C and then liver cancer) and Patrick.
Taken as a whole, the display was just stunning. As my family often says, “All class. Lower-middle, but all class.”
The Mass proceeded as it usually does, and those of us with parts to read did well, including my father’s cousin Margaret, who was terrified that when she got to the word “hoary” in her reading from the Book of Wisdom, Aunt Beth would make her laugh. Even Aunt Beth herself, who is not at all fond of speaking in front of groups, did well with the second reading. Sister 1 and I handled the Intercessions (non-Catholics: this is the “we pray to the Lord/Lord hear our prayer” part). Nobody tripped or fell or slipped and banged their head on the casket, which is an improvement over some other family eternal send-offs.
We behaved.
We cried when Uncle Jim did the eulogy and mentioned after all the laughs that Uncle Larry didn’t warm up to goodbye kisses at parties until very late in life, and only once is on record as having picked up a child for that purpose. It was my nephew, and my sister had captured the moment with her camera. It was one of the photos on the poster board in the back of the church. We cried again when the funeral director and his assistants removed the traditional white drape from the casket and replaced it with an American flag to signify Uncle Larry’s service in World War II. We sang “How Great Thou Art.” We filed out.
And, standing at the back of the hearse as the funeral director firmly but solemnly told my cousins and uncles how to put Uncle Larry’s casket into the back of the vehicle, someone cracked, “Aw hell, just put him on the truck.”
Uncle Larry had been an over-the-road trucker. Apparently, this is exactly what he himself would have said, because several people nodded and agreed that’s what he’d want.
Lovely, no?
I had to leave straight from Mass and drive back home to go to work, so I missed the procession to the cemetery, but Patrick posted photos on Facebook later. (Yes. Photos on Facebook of his grandfather’s funeral procession, taken from the vehicle behind the hearse.) He really only took two, and it was so he could show everyone what led the funeral procession: a big, shiny red rig.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s things like this that tell us who our loved ones really were when we send them on to their final resting place. I have no doubt that there were a lot of honest, hard-working, blue-collar people who saw that rig leading that procession and thought, “There goes a hard-working man. May he rest in peace.” And I’m grateful for that. But considering that my grandfather was buried with two Navy sailors flanking his grave and a gun salute from the police department of which he’d been a member for 25 years, this big rig and slot machine stuff was… well…
Tacky, okay? There, I said it. Incredibly, stuff-I-thought-only-other-families-did tacky.
But it was Uncle Larry. Uncle Larry, who wanted to be buried in the ruffly tuxedo shirt from 1978. Uncle Larry, who was known by name to every casino employee in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Uncle Larry, who pushed his false teeth out at the young kids until Aunt Gennie yelled at him to stop.
You may not be surprised at this point to learn that Uncle Larry was the one guy in the family who actually used to tell people to pull his finger.
Uncle Larry, may flights of angels wing thee to thy rest, and may you have one hell of a reunion party up there with your sister, your brothers-in-law, your parents, your wife, your daughters and your son-in-law. Down here, we’ll miss your crooked smile and your curmudgeonly grunts that stood in for greetings. We’ll miss your laugh and the way you could sit in the same spot with your arms folded for hours.
But never again will we buy a slot machine floral arrangement.
Because that thing is hideous and wrong.
And I have the picture to prove it.
I think the spray of greens behind it really classes it up, don't you?
——- Sadly, the lovely featured image is not from Uncle Larry’s funeral. It’s from gordonandthewhale.com.
Last week, I regaled you with the amazingness of the Flower Duet from Lakme’ and mentioned how it’s been used in commercials. I think it’s sort of bizarre when commercials use classical and opera pieces that are seemingly completely unrelated to the product they’re pushing. Case in point: this week’s Music Monday sampling.
I have Comcast cable, and the monopoly company has been running an ad lately in which people and objects sort of jump out of a television screen at a viewer who’s rather blown away by the whole thing. Nevermind that I don’t want that to happen in my house, ever, and I find it to be a fairly meaningless ad. The reason it caught my attention at all is because of the music it uses.
It’s the “Sanctus” movement from Mozart’s Requiem.
Ah, Mozart’s Requiem. I said in my first Music Monday post that I have had a love affair with it for years. I sang it in France. I’m letting that sentence fall flat because of the link; I don’t want to launch into the whole thing right now, so you can read a bit about it in that previous entry if you want. Point is, the Mozart Requiem is a very well-known work in choral circles, and it absolutely rings and echoes and soars in French churches, be they made of marble or humble stone with dirt floors. We did it in both, plus a more modern, plaster-walled place, just because we could.
The work has a back story that’s almost mythical: Mozart was commissioned to write it for the late wife of a stranger. Our Wolfgang and his wife Constanze were desperate for money and she was getting increasingly anxious about it. (Wolfgang was a bit devil-may-care about things like this; he had other things to worry about, like the Emperor.) But Mozart was becoming increasingly ill, and seemingly going mad; he felt the work would kill him.
He was right. Though he wrote the foundation of the entire work and had completed parts of it, he died in the middle of writing the “Lacrimosa” movement (coincidentally, the only movement in the work that concentrates on grief).
With her husband dead, Constanze was left to search out someone who could finish the commissioned piece so she could get the much-needed payment. Constanze was not a gold digger… she was just really strapped for cash, with mouths to feed and a husband dead at 36. Eventually, she convinced one of Mozart’s associates, Franz Sussmayr, to complete the work.
That’s all I’ll say about that for now.
The “Sanctus,” for those unfamiliar with the Catholic rite of worship and, more specifically, the funeral mass (which is what a requiem traditionally is), is the part of the mass that translates to the Holy Holy Holy. It beatifies God during the consecration of the bread and wine, in the liturgy of the eucharist. It’s a song of praise, and Mozart makes it triumphant in the midst of mourning and fear and heartfelt requests for the forgiveness of sins… but it still has plenty of the darkness that comes with the fear of God in that moment when a soul hovers between Earth and either Heaven or Hell.
Which is why I find it odd that Comcast uses it in their commercial.
There are so many beautiful moments in the work, it’s almost impossible to pick a favorite, but the “Sanctus” movement is one of mine, for the sake of one single line. Throughout all the rehearsals and performances of the Requiem, I was next to my friend Bill, who has a gorgeous tenor voice. Every time we got to this one phrase, when my soprano part dipped lower and his complementary tenor part soared higher, it was all I could do to keep my sound going; the phrase just takes my breath away. It boils down to one note, really, but Mozart was so brilliant in the way he structured the chord that it just opens the whole thing wide. Below, the link to the movement, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. I regret that I do not know which choir he is conducting or when and where the recording was made. The phrase I adore begins at 1:09, and the tenor note to listen for is at 1:14-1:15. As usual, I encourage you to find better quality recordings on your downloadable music provider of choice; if you do, I suggest a recording on the London Digital label, of the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Georg Solti and featuring Cecilia Bartoli, Arleen Auger, Vinson Cole and Rene Pape as soloists, with the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsoperchor. (That’s a choir.) It was recorded live in Vienna in 1992, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death. If you want to buy the CD, the cover looks like this:
Apart from checking on the time for that tenor note… close your eyes and listen. Happy Music Monday.
I would like to ban bumper stickers. I have many reasons for this, not least of which is that they make your car look crappy. There’s really no such thing as a classy bumper sticker, I don’t care what the message is. You’re still putting a cheap piece of inelegant plasticized schlock on your car. Ick.
A few examples of things that are unnecessarily expressed via vehicular communcation:
“My child is on the Honor Roll at <school>!”
I’m glad your child is smart enough to be on the honor roll, and I applaud the fact that you want to visibly support that child in his/her academic endeavors. But I was on the honor roll, and I forbade my parents from putting those stickers on the car. Because the only thing more nerdy than consistently being on the honor roll is riding around in a car that screams about it to everyone behind you.
“This car climbed Mt. Washington.” First of all, by all outward appearances, that was 20 years ago. But congrats. Now, can the car accelerate past 42 miles per hour on the highway? Get out of the way.
“Hunt with your kids, not for them.”
I don’t even know what that means. I puzzled over it until my puzzler was sore. I called other people, people who hunt, and asked them. They didn’t know, either. I couldn’t find a supporting foundation or organization that put out this sticker. It’s baffling.
But the biggest reason I want to ban bumper stickers, by far, is because I really didn’t ask for your opinion, and I certainly don’t want to read it while I’m stuck in already irritating traffic.
I don’t mind that you have opinions. Obviously, I have a few, myself. It’s just that I don’t want to know your stand on war, or a given politician, or abortion, or cancer (which universally is believed to suck, so I don’t need your bumper sticker to state the obvious), or mean people (also universally believed to suck), or the United Nations, or whatever.
Why do so many bumper stickers have something to do with politics or religion? There’s ample room for debate on the topics that we slap on our cars, so why are we constantly insulting everyone’s intelligence by implying that it’s really so simple that we can fit it on a sticker? It’s not that simple. In fact, I bet there are a lot of people on this road who know a lot more than you do about the topic your bumper is yelling at me about in all caps. This bumper sticker mentality is, I believe, partly responsible for the circus that is our present political and campaign system. The bumper sticker is the abbreviated form of the soundbite, which is the abbreviated form of an explanation for an actual political concept way too complicated to be boiled down into any of the above things.
I don’t believe people who have these bumper stickers want to “start a national conversation.” I believe they want to argue, gloat, and/or insist they were right all along.
“Don’t blame me – I voted for <Name>.” Okay, well, I don’t blame you for anything except being a narcissist and a bad driver. And I don’t really care who you voted for. Even if I voted for the same person, I’m annoyed, because I realize I’m now lumped into a category with you.
“I’ll keep my money, my freedom and my guns. You can keep the ‘change.’” How ’bout you keep moving. Preferably away from me.
“It’s a child, not a choice”/”It is a poverty that a child must die so that you may live the way you wish. ~Mother Teresa”/”Abortion stops a beating heart”, etc. Okay… deep breath. I happen to agree. But that’s me. And I’m Catholic, so I kind of have to agree with everything Mother Teresa ever said. It’s tough to find a case where she was wrong, because she was just super-nice. But not everyone believes the same things, not everyone understands life in the same way, not everyone has the same life, choices, education, resources, home life, opportunity… Reducing this incredibly sensitive and complex issue down to something that fits on a bumper sticker is just irresponsible and will do nothing to change anyone’s mind. It will only make people angry. Including me, and I agree with you. So take the sticker off your car and mind your own business before I rear-end you on purpose.
“Visualize world peace.”
Visualize your accelerator. Long pedal on the right.
There is, however, one kind of bumper sticker I can appreciate. That, as you might imagine, is the genuinely funny kind.
“Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you’re an a$$hole.” Now that’s the kind of bumper sticker mentality I can get behind.
can’t. would be soooo obvious.
