The Second Funeral
Dad didn’t cry at Grandpa’s funeral. Neither did mom. Grandma was ostensibly loud, but I never actually saw a tear. My uncle though. He was made of stone. I mean, at least the rest tried to look sad. But Uncle Stan stood in the back and his face was angrier than I’d ever seen it.
I was 22 when Grandpa Pines died. By that time we’d moved cross country and I was in my last year of undergrad. Computer Science was the hot new field and I was naturally interested in computers growing up. And all sorts of other gadgets. Dad started me with tin soldiers, but somehow I always ended up with the tinker toys.
My parents lived in South California. I went to school further north. My one uncle lived in Oregon, but he was closer than Mom and Dad. Grandma and Grandpa still lived in New Jersey. I got a phone call from Mom about the news. Told her thanks for calling and we discussed school for a bit before hanging up.
Didn’t bother me over much. I had a paper due in two days that bothered me more, to be honest. Grandpa Pines always made me feel like a disappointment when I was a kid, without even saying a word.
Plus, when I was 17, Dad had finally told me the story (as he knew it) behind Uncle Lee and Grandpa. It’s a good thing we’d already moved, or else I would’ve done something stupid. Like egg his house or bust up some of the shop. As it was, I had some buddies of mine from back home bust up his car. Key it, TP the shop, just punk stuff that’d been going on for years. All at once. Dad wasn’t too happy to hear I’d done that.
Uncle Stan, on the other hand, had offered me a high 5 ½.
(I’ll get to that later)
Anyway, Grandpa died when I was 22 and my first thought was if that meant I could push back my paper’s deadline because of a death in the family. (The professor was pretty tough, but a few fake tears and he broke down into a human being again. My professors are better with machines than people, mostly).
I called Uncle Stan the day I got the call after class. We talked about some of my homework for a while, and he even helped me get unstuck from this problem I’d been having in my upper level math for a while.
Then I asked if he’d heard the news. Uncle Stan is a guy who could talk even the most obnoxious know-it-all in circles, under any circumstances. I’d heard the stories and seen him in action, on occasion. But when I asked this, a part of him seemed to drop, and I heard him take a few quick breaths on the other end of the line before he answered with a shaky “Yes.”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I expected from him. Dad had told me most of the story between Uncle Lee, Uncle Stan, and Grandpa, but he’d only gotten it secondhand. When all that happened, I was almost two, being watched by Grandma the night it happened. It weirds me out to think that the last time I saw Uncle Lee alive, I’d barely been old enough to walk.
Mom had been at work, waitressing. Dad had been serving too, overseas somewhere. Here’s how Dad told me it happened:
My Grandpa Filbrick was a hard man, hard to please, hard to get a word out of, hard-pressed to show any emotion except anger. My dad was their first son. Older than Uncle Lee and Uncle Stan by almost ten years.
Grandpa had been hard on the tree of them, but he’d been the worst on his second children. Twins, unexpected, and ‘a burden from day one.’ Dad had heard Grandpa Filbrick saw a few too many things about Lee and Ford over the years, some while drunk, some stone cold sober. That’s just how Grandpa was.
Dad said Grandpa hadn’t paid a lick of attention to either of them unless they were making him look bad—or if they had the potential to make money. (Some of this is how Mom saw things too. Once they argued about who had the better perspective on it, all things considered. I’m not sure either of them won).
When my uncles were 17 (turning 18 that summer—I had just turned 2 that January) Uncle Ford was suddenly in the running for a full-ride scholarship to one of the best sci-tech colleges in the country. The principal told ‘em all it could be the opportunity to make them millions one day. Mom said from that moment on, Filbrick saw Ford as a talking dollar sign, and didn’t see Lee at all.
Something happened to Ford’s project—the one that would get him the full ride—and Lee was blamed. There was a huge fight at home, and only four people know exactly what was said, two of which are now dead. Filbrick kicked his son Lee out of the house, banning him from coming back until he could make up the millions he’d stolen when he’d supposedly ruined Ford’s project.
Ford didn’t help his brother. Too angry, he turned away when Lee called for help.
The real kicker in the story, though, is that Grandpa had already had a bag packed for Stan. He had just been waiting for the opportunity to do it. Dad said my Grandpa bragged about that one night after a few too many rounds at the local bar. Dad had come to pick him up and carried him half home, taxis all gone. Dad said he’d dumped him on the curb to let him find his own way after he’d said that. I would have punched him first. But I’m not really a fighter. I’m a big guy, but I’m no good at throwing that weight around.
Anyway, that’s most of the story. Uncle Lee took Grandpa’s words seriously, until ten years later he died in a car wreck on his way to talk to Uncle Stan.
That rally seemed to tear Uncle Stan up. That’s when he changed his family nickname from Ford to Stan. That’s all I’ve really known him as.
That’s Dad’s version. When I was 17, Dad told me all that. When I was 18, I’d gone up to Uncle Stan’s for a couple of weeks before school started. He gave me the story between the cracks. It was a hundred times worse coming from him.
He told me how Grandpa Filbrick had yelled and roughly handled Uncle Lee. He told me of the justified anger he’d felt at his brother. How his Pa’s reaction only egged him on. How he turned away when his brother needed him most. Then immediately threw up, sick with what he’d done.
But, how, over time, that anger and justification was continuously fed and fueled by his father. Filbrick kept the wound fresh. And Ford let that anger for his brother fester. The desire to prove himself fueled him through finishing college on time but with two extra degrees. How he came out here to continue studying.
It led only to dead ends and disappointments. He hadn’t talked to his father since his first year in Gravity Falls, when he made it clear he didn’t care about making money, he just wanted to study. Filbrick had practically disowned him as well, at that.
Apparently Grandpa’s greatest skill was alienating himself and everyone around him.
Uncle Stan told me how it felt, all those years. The guilt and anger warring within him for so long. He told me what it did to him when he lost Stanley when he was so close to seeing him again. He told me a lot of things that made me shudder and wipe a tear at. I couldn’t even dream of putting it all here. It’s too much.
So when I asked if Uncle Stan had heard the news, I wasn’t sure what to expect from him. I asked if he’d be going back for the funeral. He said he oughtta help his Ma pack away the shop. I hadn’t thought about that.
I asked if I could help. Uncle Stan wanted me to stay at school, not get distracted by old bones and dust. I agreed to stay at school if he agreed to let me visit after he got back. He laughed and joked about my flourishing skills as a negotiator, claiming all the credit. But he agreed and we moved on to lighter topics, talking about small nothings for another few minutes before I let him go.
Uncle Stan has come to mean a lot to me these last ten years. I met him when I was twelve. I hated to think he was up there alone during another bad time. Knowing our family’s history made it harder for me to just try and let him suffer through another death in the family by himself. But he’s a tough guy, and he hates showing what he thinks of as weakness in front of other people. He lets his guard down with me, sometimes, but it’s hard to crack through.
The funeral was rough, but afterwards when we were talking, most of the anger had melted off his face. I had to leave soon after to hop on a plane and get back in time for classes. But next time I saw him, there were a few reminders of Filbrick hanging around the Shack. Most noticeably, his old, weird fez. I helped out with tours and the gift shop, and took Unlce Stan out to the diner a few times. You can never really tell what Uncle Stan is thinking, but I think for the few days I spent with him, he was thinking about the good part of family, not the terrible kind his dad gave them.