My Grandmother died on Tuesday and I was in Germany. Here's a beautiful piece my dad wrote in an email to my aunt, summarising the experience.
I hope your return trip was far less eventful than our protracted odyssey through the bowels of Connecticut. We’ve made the trip three times in the last month, and this last one was the most challenging. I shudder to consider what you had to deal with all along 95 at that time of night. Geoffrey was also on the road heading north last night, and I’ve yet to hear how it went for him.
The weather was nice on Thursday, however, which was the day of the funeral. We met Geoffrey at the train station and got to the chapel at the Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
Most of the real estate in the town of Valhalla is populated, albeit by the once living rather than those of the current status. It’s the final resting place of those in the Archdiocese of New York, city that is, so imagine the magnitude of acreage involved. There’s also a similarly sprawling non-denominational resting ground to the west, with an impressive who’s who of the Big Apple’s mortally challenged. Viewed from Google maps, one notices the very orderly arrangement of a bird’s eye of granite and marble within the town layout. Kind of a suburb of sepulchers.
The Chris G. contingent arrived with seconds to spare which were snatched up in the final assembly of my funereal outfit: tie tying, jacket insertion and pulling up my pants. Not enough time, however, to withdraw from my suitcase the eulogy I’d carefully crafted on the previous night. Almost from the time foot joined pavement, I was summoned to quorum with the officiating priest regarding the readings and the readers. And me without my script.
The priest was on loan from the Sparta, New Jersey parish my mother had attended for about thirty years, but whom was still an unknown quantity to anyone there. While making arrangements for the service, I was asked what my mother looked like and where did she usually sit during the service because, well, we’re not sure who you’re talking about.
Gosh, I said, she usually sat in the second pew back on the left side by herself, but I suppose it’s easy to miss someone sitting up so close.
Jesus, I thought, and these are the ones who like to think of themselves as a welcoming faith community. Apparently you’re nothing to these servants of the Almighty but a name on a check in the offertory basket. Mary and I noticed during the few services that we attended there that the folks in the pews were not encouraged, or simply exercised their option, not to sing along with the choir. We also thought it strange that prayers and responsorial prayers were mumbled, if spoken at all, by an assembly that dwarfed the church we regularly attend. Four times the size but a quarter of the volume. It would have surprised me not at all to learn that the better set of the congregation would bring their house keepers along to participate as their proxies. The help might also be more familiar with heartfelt appeals to God than their lords and ladies. One has to wonder what Pope Francis would do if he stood in their midst holding a machete.
The priest who was assigned the Bereaved Family detail, however, was a nice young Polish guy who said Mass the last time Mary and I took my mother to church around Memorial Day. Nice guy, but afflicted with an impossibly thick accent that was only worsened by the acoustics of a public address system in the cavernous church. No amount of leaning forward, squinting and repeating, “Huh, huh?” could bring the Word of God, as interpreted and announced by Fr. Gregory into discernible focus. But, then again, the congregation itself might as well have been life-sized cardboard cut outs of themselves, so it seemed a fragile balance had been struck between the indecipherable officiate and the indifferent audience. Everyone seemed okay with the status quo.
Upon entering the chapel the first object that met my gaze was my mother’s casket, half draped with an ornamental shroud. This was the moment I dreaded; this is really happening, Chris. Mom-in-a-box.
Fortunately I had little time to dwell on this sensation of gravity as Fr. Gregory was approaching, hand extended.
“You ah Misteh Gelp?” he greeted me. “Ah, dis iss soch a lofflee chapel. I deed nawt know eet wood be so lofflee for dee sorviss; I think it bee not so nice, but chost look at how nice.” Priests must regard other churches as rock musicians view nightclubs and a gig’s a gig.
It was a nice little grotto, in fact. Stone floors, stone walls, and a dome ceiling. What it lacked in warmth and acoustics, it made up for in Rock of Ages solidity. It could serve nicely as an upscale fallout shelter as well.
The reading arrangements were quickly glossed over and I could see that my PDF messages sent the previous morning were in proper order on the lectern, and turned to the correct page. It was determined the day before that I would do the first reading while my niece Liana, the golden child of the next generation (my older brother’s daughter) would present the second.
Liana, by way of introduction, may be regarded as Hannah’s sweet doppelganger. Everyone loves Liana; it may be a felony in several states and sovereignties not to. Hannah, on the other hand, is her grittier foil, and longtime admirer/detractor for those reasons, and closest of kin. They are an interesting arrangement when placed side by side. I don’t know if such a pairing exists on your side of the family.
I was impressed that a number of my siblings and their offspring could ramble through the liturgy from memory. Then again, a lot couldn’t. My Goth-flavored blimp of an atheist-hugging nephew sat behind me, whipping his black-dyed hair out of his face and casting his gaze downward, fiercely maintaining his edginess in light of the proceedings. Several of his female cousins sobbed throughout, those who would visit with my mother regularly and had held her in some regard.
The disciple of the dark lord behind me, on the other hand, was a well known mama’s boy (who I maintain drove my brother to drink with his manipulative neediness) who was probably in my mother’s presence for no more than a handful of occasions in his life. The regular family photo Christmas greeting postcard chronicled young Timmy’s annual girth enhancements and hairstyle choices over the course of the last decade, but that would be the only evidence of his existence as we, the remaining siblings, assumed that brother Timm was lost to his wife’s family and benefactors. We were not altogether unhappy about this turn of events; no one really wanted Poppin’ Ferocious, the devil’s doughboy, around anyway.
In the course of the service, I was beckoned to the lectern for the first reading. When I was attending the small Episcopalian congregation next door to my apartment in downtown [redacted], I would do regular readings from the pulpit, so I was actually kind of looking forward to having at it, even with my mother lying there, just to my right. I read expressively, if I can be so immodest, and give it a little oomph in the adjectives and pump in the prepositions. If I weren’t so blind, however, I wouldn’t lose my place and skip lines, as Mary pointed out to me later on that I had, in fact, done so.
Liana was up next with the epistle, and she was going great there until the word “death” popped up in the text. The poor thing veered off from there, and within the interval of the next two verses, descended into halting sobs that brought the exercise to a standstill. An awkward pause ensured, followed by Mary, seated next to Geoffrey in the front pew, who continued the reading while Liana led the sobbing that her cousins echoed from within the assembly.
Since we had paid for a Mass, we were getting a Mass, including the main course. Rather than queuing up for Communion in the aisle, the priest walked from pew to pew presenting, and the first stop was me, in the first row. And Geoffrey, kneeling next to me.
I suppose I should have warned him that he could graciously decline, but events were rolling quickly. This might have been the fastest Mass on record.
So, as it happened, Geoffrey became one of the few Jews to take the Holy Biscuit. I thought Mary, next to him, was going to faint. He looked at me, raised a brow and noted that it could use some salt. I said buddy, you know you’re going to be crapping fire as a consequence. Later, reviewing the incident, I told him that he now had super powers. He asked if he could see through women’s clothing and I told him that if he wanted to abuse his new powers, there would be eternal consequences, and it’s part of the deal. He should have asked if he was now able to invest more wisely.
The service ended and that was that, I thought. The priest must have thought I was the alpha male of the clan because he approached me about the yew-loggy. Quick translation: oh God, it’s in the car.
Not to miss a beat and let the tears start drying, I took my place at the lectern once again, rolled my eyes to the heavens and tried to remember what was written, and correctly punctuated, on that piece of paper in the car.
Well, much of it came back. It was actually helpful that I wasn’t reading because I could look at everyone in their seats and not puzzling through words on paper. I recounted an apocryphal incident about the time when we were very young when my mother drove us out to the Long Island Sound on the other side of Larchmont, let us run or stumble around in the sand while she stood facing the waves by herself. The point of the allusion was that even though we thought of her as only our mother, she still had an inner life of her own that had been displaced, for the most part, on our behalf, and we should all recognize that in all of us. And so on.
We were lucky to have nice weather that day. The graveside service was brief and it wasn’t really clear when it was over. Once the priest was through some awkwardness followed because no one wanted to be the first to step away. There was the coffin, perched over a large rectangular gash in the ground with a metallic frame, ready for final insertion. I didn’t want to be there when that happened; I was okay with the final glance being that of it still sitting there above, like she’s still here among us and not in the complete cold quiet of decomposition. Geoffrey and I walked away together, discussing his new super powers.
To answer your question, I’m doing okay. As deaths go, this was a good one. My mother went in her sleep sometime early Tuesday morning. The live-in aide sleeping on the other side of the room didn’t hear a thing. I got a text from my sister, who was sleeping upstairs, shortly after they found her. I suppose the big excitement in the neighborhood that day was the hearse pulling up to the curb and the old lady in the end unit being slid in the back end. Just a matter of time before the “For Sale” sign goes up and Mom’s history is subsumed by the demand for first-time buyer’s homes.
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