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Sep. 27th, 2004 05:24 pmToday was the hardest day.
Uncle Bill told us with a chuckle how they chose the plot for the family - there were a couple to choose from, but then he saw the one had a house right across the street with two black labrador retrievers running around the yard. "That's the one we want!" he guffawed.
She's gone now, and laid to rest. So many people showed up. The funeral procession stretched and snaked up and down Milwaukee Ave. If I don't have to drive up and down that street again any time soon, I will be quite grateful. This morning I woke up to find my alarm clock had been killed by a plug knocked slightly out of the wall by the cats. My internal alarm woke me, and I sluggishly showered, dried my hair, ironed my hair, donned black. This all felt quite unreal, today. A mistake. A miscue. I was not ready.
I'd been to both days of the wake, so you think I'd have been more prepared, but as we met this morning in the fluorescent-lit parlor and paid our very last respects before the lid to the casket was lowered, my composure broke. I snatched up a small stack of tissues from a box on a handy side table and tucked them into my purse for later. Potato chips, half of a hard salami sandwich, a sweater to keep warm, a keychain with the address of Lincoln Tavern on it, pictures of the family dogs, a Michigan pennant ... no shoes upon her feet, but socks, because her feet were always so cold. Her casket was fit for a modern-day Pharoah. I hope we feel as well supplied, in the days to come.
It was a sunny day, and we crawled along Milwaukee back the way I'd just come in not even an hour earlier, all cars adorned with little flapping orange funeral flags. I poured coffee in small cupfuls from my thermos as my brother drove, and soon enough we were at the church. And then soon enough we were walking slowly, blurred vision and gold leaf and prayer candles swimming in kaleidoscope back out into the light, the casket born aloft by eight women, gloved and solemn.
It was really the oddest thing to pass by my own building on the way back up Milwaukee to the cemetary for burial. We were the third car in line behind the hearse, and my stomach dropped as we paused for a moment within sight of my kitchen windows. Goodbye, house. Goodbye, neighborhood. Goodbye, 57 Chevy. I began to say goodbye to my aunt, and it hurt terribly, sharp and sudden and very quiet. An autonomous mathematical equation solving itself. Subtract, subtract, subtract. At the cemetary we trudged along a good long swath of lawn before reaching the plot, and there was the boarding around the edges with the astroturf covering, the crank and pulley system, the well-dug straight sides of the hole in the ground, earth drying and crumbly and pebbly. Gloves of the pallbearers, flowers atop the gloves, the sunshine burnishing the tops of our heads, my mom grasping my hand tightly.
This is a mistake. This is too sudden. This cannot possibly be goodbye. So many people. So many friends. Such a small world.
Luncheon, after. Coffee and a little bit of wine and pierogies and kapusta and Polish sausage. Laughter. My eyes hurt. I feel like passing out from exhaustion at the table. I leave burgundy lipmarks on my coffee cup. I keep reaching out to touch my mom's arm, to make sure she is still there, to tell her, I am here, I am here, I am here.
My aunt Sandra is missing. There is a hollow spot that you know you've read in every account of a funeral, in every eulogy. A hole in the heart, a piece that is missing and gone. There is no recompense, and this is the place were you re-acquaint yourself with the now. Grief is such a thin, salty broth.
She taught me how to tie my shoelaces. She let me eat oyster crackers behind the bar when I was little. She would always ask me, in her little, sweet voice, "Do you like living in your apartment?" (and I'd say yes yes yes yes yes!) and sometimes she'd hug me, and out of nowhere, she'd say, "I love you."
This doesn't suffice, but I need to start making sense of this.
Uncle Bill told us with a chuckle how they chose the plot for the family - there were a couple to choose from, but then he saw the one had a house right across the street with two black labrador retrievers running around the yard. "That's the one we want!" he guffawed.
She's gone now, and laid to rest. So many people showed up. The funeral procession stretched and snaked up and down Milwaukee Ave. If I don't have to drive up and down that street again any time soon, I will be quite grateful. This morning I woke up to find my alarm clock had been killed by a plug knocked slightly out of the wall by the cats. My internal alarm woke me, and I sluggishly showered, dried my hair, ironed my hair, donned black. This all felt quite unreal, today. A mistake. A miscue. I was not ready.
I'd been to both days of the wake, so you think I'd have been more prepared, but as we met this morning in the fluorescent-lit parlor and paid our very last respects before the lid to the casket was lowered, my composure broke. I snatched up a small stack of tissues from a box on a handy side table and tucked them into my purse for later. Potato chips, half of a hard salami sandwich, a sweater to keep warm, a keychain with the address of Lincoln Tavern on it, pictures of the family dogs, a Michigan pennant ... no shoes upon her feet, but socks, because her feet were always so cold. Her casket was fit for a modern-day Pharoah. I hope we feel as well supplied, in the days to come.
It was a sunny day, and we crawled along Milwaukee back the way I'd just come in not even an hour earlier, all cars adorned with little flapping orange funeral flags. I poured coffee in small cupfuls from my thermos as my brother drove, and soon enough we were at the church. And then soon enough we were walking slowly, blurred vision and gold leaf and prayer candles swimming in kaleidoscope back out into the light, the casket born aloft by eight women, gloved and solemn.
It was really the oddest thing to pass by my own building on the way back up Milwaukee to the cemetary for burial. We were the third car in line behind the hearse, and my stomach dropped as we paused for a moment within sight of my kitchen windows. Goodbye, house. Goodbye, neighborhood. Goodbye, 57 Chevy. I began to say goodbye to my aunt, and it hurt terribly, sharp and sudden and very quiet. An autonomous mathematical equation solving itself. Subtract, subtract, subtract. At the cemetary we trudged along a good long swath of lawn before reaching the plot, and there was the boarding around the edges with the astroturf covering, the crank and pulley system, the well-dug straight sides of the hole in the ground, earth drying and crumbly and pebbly. Gloves of the pallbearers, flowers atop the gloves, the sunshine burnishing the tops of our heads, my mom grasping my hand tightly.
This is a mistake. This is too sudden. This cannot possibly be goodbye. So many people. So many friends. Such a small world.
Luncheon, after. Coffee and a little bit of wine and pierogies and kapusta and Polish sausage. Laughter. My eyes hurt. I feel like passing out from exhaustion at the table. I leave burgundy lipmarks on my coffee cup. I keep reaching out to touch my mom's arm, to make sure she is still there, to tell her, I am here, I am here, I am here.
My aunt Sandra is missing. There is a hollow spot that you know you've read in every account of a funeral, in every eulogy. A hole in the heart, a piece that is missing and gone. There is no recompense, and this is the place were you re-acquaint yourself with the now. Grief is such a thin, salty broth.
She taught me how to tie my shoelaces. She let me eat oyster crackers behind the bar when I was little. She would always ask me, in her little, sweet voice, "Do you like living in your apartment?" (and I'd say yes yes yes yes yes!) and sometimes she'd hug me, and out of nowhere, she'd say, "I love you."
This doesn't suffice, but I need to start making sense of this.
