Funeral Parties

A few weeks ago I wrote this out about going to funerals, in a stretch where I am probably beginning to face mortality. Right now, in the wake of several deaths of my peers, I am looking hard at life, and crazy-grateful for the turn it has taken over the last few years. For the longest time, I didn’t really care if I lived. I wasn’t going to go put a bullet in my head, but I wasn’t taking care of myself at all, and I have gotten in the worst sort of shape, but at least am still breathing.

My fitness is coming back, and mentally, I am solid, like never before. I just wish that those that have passed could see me, or know what I know now. Maybe it is my daughter, maybe it’s just some different manifestation of mid-life crisis, but it’s good.

As I’ve alluded too, a little time has passed since this was written, but I found it hiding in my Zoho stacks, and wanted to post it. Since this batch of funerals, there have been more, but the feeling about them hasn’t passed.

Funeral Party

Been to too many funerals lately I guess, but there have been only two. Maybe it is that the times and events around funerals seeemed lumped together. So that when I go back, it is like I was just there, no matter the length of time in between or differences in locations or whom I lost. Like weddings, there are those that seem to flourish at funerals and visitations. They look at ease, acceptably distraught but not disoriented, saying the right things, comforting in just the right way… I’m not one of those people.

It’s not because I am afraid of death, or upset at someone’s passing so much that I can’t function. It’s just that the whole setup, of funerals and visitations, doesn’t make sense to me. It seems that yet another thing that started as a sincere, deep gesture, has been distorted into some long, overbearing, process, complete with a smiling, smug, starched, funeral director to move things along. What did we do before they had funeral directors? I guess they have been around since before the time of the Pharaohs. Is there some sort of gene in us that tells us how to mourn, or that we should somehow organize our mourning so that it doesn’t completely take us over. I think I had an onset of that when I was a kid, and dragged a cousin of mine along for the ride.

I was staying at my Grandma and Grandpa Campbells, my dad’s parents, in Maple Park. I was young, because this was before they retired to the Ozarks, and that was when I was 10. My cousin, and sorry girls, I can’t remember which one, I think actually it was two different of my female cousins, being interchanged over my two week stint, whichever she was, I think Trina and Kelly, was there with me as I decided to build a grave marker for my grandparent’s long lost dog.

I’d never even seen the dog, it had died long before I was aware of anything. It might even have died before I was born, but my grandma talked about it often, and so it was in some way alive to me because everything my grandma said to me was at once crucial and precious. That’s what touched me, was the way in which my grandma mentioned this dog, and that was what must have made me begin to obsess about where it was buried and to have a memorial for it.

Hmm, I did have a dog that went off to live on a farm, supposedly hit by a car, when I was younger, maybe that’s why I was so involved? No matter, I at first decided that I needed to put up a grave marker. At the time I did not note the crazy looks my grandpa gave me. I guess that their first grandchild had some new wrinkles for them. My grandma, as always, was nothing but encouragement and helpfulness. Truly, there was never anything that I could ask of her that she would not have given me. She was that type. If I had asked her for her arm, she would have smiled and calmly given it to me. That was Grandma.

Grandpa was the realist of the two, but no less generous or kind. Still, if I’d asked him for an arm, he would have given me one of those crazy looks and then asked what the hell I thought he was going to do without one. Well, he wouldn’t have sworn at me, but he would have been coarse. Grandpa didn’t suffer foolishness easily, or disguise his feelings.

So, I made a grave marker for the dog. Then, I decided I wanted to have a funeral as well. That was when Grandpa put a kibosh on the whole thing. That was enough. It was too weird, too ghoulish, and I was dragging my little cousin into the whole sick little ordeal. At least now, looking back, that’s how I interpret it. I also remember that I met the decision to stop my dog funeral without much protest, more like a shrug. “ehhh, okay, it wasn’t all that I thought it was going to be anyways.”

And so now, it seems to be funeral season. And yes, I have only been to two. And no, I was not close to either of the passed individuals, though one of them was drinking beer with me in my driveway the night before he decided to end his own life. His name was Mark, and he is one of those people in a small town that has always seemed to be on the perimeter of people that I know, yet not really a friend.

I got to know him better when he married another friend of mine, and over the last year or so have spent time starting to get to know him. I liked him. He was fun to have a beer with and just hang out with. He was a good mechanic, and had come over to help me with my car a couple of times, but we spent more time drinking and talking.

Last Tuesday night, he was helping me get my stereo installed. I am a terrible mechanic. I have bad luck any time I try to fix something in a car myself and always end up calling for help. Installing the stereo, I could almost tell him what he was doing before he did it, but left to my own devices I would have had it screwed up. Even now, as I’ve found that the speakers in my Jeep are blown, I know that had I installed the stereo myself I would simply be blaming that and be getting ready to pay someone to do it right. Now I know it’s the speakers, but otherwise someone would surely extort extra cash from me before telling me that and making me think that I screwed it all up.

Anyway, they were having marital troubles and that’s what Mark was talking about as we stood in my driveway. Then he went home. I told him I’d call him the next day about something else, but that didn’t happen because I got sidetracked and that night he went into his garage with his shotgun and shot himself.

I feel terrible for his wife, Pam. I’m not sure what else I feel. Walking into the funeral home for the visitation, I instantly felt uncomfortable. I didn’t know anyone well, it is a small town, every face is familiar. Every name on the tip of your tongue, but I was in no mood for reacquainting myself. I wanted to see Pam, tell her how bad I felt for her, and get out, back to the life of baby smiles and love and sunshine that I have now. Inside those funeral homes, around those that are truly grieving, is darkness and ugliness and casual deflections of the truth. All of these things I want to remain foreign to me.

Last time at a funeral home, the night before, to visit the wife of a man that had passed away from old age, whom I never knew, but if he bowled on my mother’s bowling team I believe I remember him just a little. We were there because of his wife, who joins us on Saturday mornings for breakfast, part of my mother’s little breakfast clutch, which has embraced myself, Lisa, and our baby. They see Molly at least twice a month and love her genuinely, and I knew that bringing her to see Kay, the grieving widow, would bring a smile, which it did, and we packed on out of there.

Leaving Mark’s visitation, his wife Pam asked me if I would be going down to the Moose later. I’m guessing that they were going to all meet down there and have the rest of the funeral party, where everyone gets drunk and weepy and later on, ugly about the whole thing over too many shots and beers.

Funeral season.