It looked like rain, heavy sky. I had plenty of time to get to the funeral, except then I overshot my turnoff and still I would have made it in time, but then I asked a young man for directions, a kid parking his moped in front of a dance school in the town, lighting up the first cigarette of the million he would smoke in his life, and he told me I was headed the wrong way, I should turn around, drive a while then ask someone else the way to the cemetery, because he wasn’t sure himself.
So I did. There was this huge train station and freight switching yard between me and there, according to my map, and I couldn’t find my way around it. I finally asked a woman for directions, and as it was just starting to rain heavily, and she lived not too far away, she offered to get in to the car and show me the way.
(This is an advantage of having a new car. No way would she have gotten into my last car, the Ted Bundymobile.)
She took me back the way I’d come, past where the kid had me turn around – he’d been more lost than I was.
We get to the corner where I turn left to get to the cemetery, she has to get out and go right, so she does, I thank her, she expresses her condolences – a nice Yugoslavian lady – and a car behind me starts honking. I check the rear view mirror before driving off: an Audi, probably my sister-in-law in a big hurry. She didn’t know I had a new car, and was getting impatient with whoever was blocking her way here just a stone’s throw from the funeral, making her late when she’d thought she’d just get there on time.
The rain was coming down pretty good by now. The parking lot was full, I had to go way up the street. Sister-in-law found a spot right in front (her car narrower than mine) and I ended up way the hell up on the far corner of the cemetery wall away from the hall where the services were. But I was in a great mood – considering I was attending a funeral – because I had found the place at all. Anyway, sister-in-law ended up arriving in time, I was 4 minutes late, the place was packed and I had to stand in the rear.
It surprised me that the place was packed. I mean, there was even an entire bus parked out front, people had been bused in. The relative who’d died had always been a black sheep of my wife’s family, and I at least had not had any idea that she had so many friends.
A choir sang.
3 generations of women sat around the coffin, with their men in tow. Two priests said various things as she had been religious and appreciated by them.
My wife and two daughters were in the front row, on the left side. I have been spared any great tragedies in my life, no close friends or relatives have died at an early age, but for one or two or so. I guess a few have, but no parents or siblings. I feel spared, anyway, knock on wood, witness to other people’s tragedies. But also incompetent and powerless; trapped at the back of the room and unable to reach my family to provide any comfort or understanding. Because they were taking this much harder than I’d thought they would, with different responses depending on their age – the 4-year old puzzled and fidgety and asking questions constantly in a loud voice, the 12-year old sad and silent and bent under the heavy weight of her great aunt’s death and all this grief and ceremony.
My wife surprised me by sobbing loudly and publicly.
Little kids, I guess you just have to explain everything. People understand. No one got upset that G was talking so much. Older kids, help them talk, I guess. Be there for them. Euphemisms and lies don’t help anyone deal with it, and they have to deal with it.
In the middle of the service, G (the 4-year old) had to go to the toilet. My wife and I took her outside to the restroom. It was raining hard. When we finally got her there, she was constipated and didn’t have to go after all. We walked around until they took the coffin to the grave, then ran between the rows of graves to catch up with the head of the procession where the family members were.
The rain slowed to a mild drizzle.
The coffin was big and white and oak.
They had originally ordered a different one, but it had turned out to be too small. The widower had gotten a call at home from the funeral home, “We can’t fit her inside. Can you come order a different one?” Later he said he’d feared all along that the coffin would be too small for her, but neither he nor anyone else had wanted to raise that possibility when picking out the first one, fearing it would sound impious.
G was asking about everything. “Why are there police here?” They aren’t police, they’re grave diggers, wearing black caps.
“Why are they carrying torches?” They symbolize light, I ad-libbed.
“Who are they going to set on fire with the torches?” No one, I hope.
“Who’s buried in this grave?” (reading headstone) Josef and Maria Buergermeister.
“And who’s in this one?” (I had to read every headstone we went past).
The situation was too much for her, and she reacted by being hyper and loud. I had muddy footprints all over the front of my black suit from her squirming and trying out new positions as I carried her.
Suddenly we were standing before the grave, the coffin had been lowered inside. Everyone tossed in a flower and a small shovel of soil and tipped the pall-bearer who handed them the trowel. I had G in my arms and so had a good reason not to tip, shrug, sorry dude, both hands full. We tossed in our flowers and some dirt, said good bye and went and stood in the line of immediate family to receive the condolences of the other guests.
There were a couple times I nearly wept, at the generosity of some of the people offering condolences that were clearly heart-felt. And looking at B, almost 12, carrying a ton of grief she couldn’t describe, silenced by this death, deep in thought.
Writing this, I remember a conversation she and I had about 4 or 5 years ago, driving somewhere in the shitty green car I had back then (a Peugeot 104 that was hard to start in wet weather), in the rain, her about 7 in the back seat, asking in a small voice out of the blue, “papa, will you die someday?” and me, surprised at the tears in my eyes, all I can say is, “yes, I will.”
“Will I ever see you again after that?”
“I don’t know, kid. I hope. All I know is, I will always be in your heart. You’ll always have me there.”
She is my hero, you see, and I wasn’t going to make up some bullshit story about heaven for her. Maybe there is a heaven, but who knows?
What kills me about grief sometimes is its lightness, and our smallness before it powerless to do anything but let it roll over us and, hopefully, get up and live on afterwards. And I prayed for her at that moment, a general ecumenical prayer to whomever was in charge, that it would work out that way, that the horrible possibilities my black imagination constantly churns out would be kept at bay, that my children would survive their parents the way it is supposed to be.
All I could do there at her great-aunt’s funeral was put an arm around B’s shoulders as she stood there shrinking inside her black velvet jacket, or squeeze her hand, surprisingly strong from her harp-playing. And I could do that only for a minute, because then I was back chasing G between the headstones again, explaining why it was disrespectful to climb onto the graves, and reading each inscription aloud, my relief growing with the distance we put between ourselves and the other mourners, relief that no one could hear her loud questions, at the same time that I didn’t really care whether anyone did. Relief at being occupied with a lively child instead of death. I looked back through the drizzle and saw that B was now being held by her mother; the funeral was breaking up, groups formed and wandered off, some guests were on their way to the mass now.
I gathered the kids and drove them home, G was too young for the mass and B had a concert to attend. The rain picked up again and she was finally able to cry in the car.
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