Real Fiction Post: Buried

[rachelleneveu]

Up until last October, I had never been to an actual funeral before. I had known people who had died – my great-grandmother when I was seven, my grandfather when I was eleven, a boy I’d kissed (and maybe loved a little, in that childish, first-crush kind of way) when I was fourteen – but I had never been to a funeral until my uncle passed away from cancer last year. It was a weird experience, not just because it was a Catholic service and I’m, well, not, but it was one of about three times that my mother’s side of my family was forced to interact with my father’s and like both times before it, it was about five shades of uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Because I wrote about my family, the only real changes I’ve made are just adjusting people’s names. In case you haven’t noticed, most of the people I know and love in real life get fun fake names when I mention them here, just to be on the safe side, and I’m continuing this tradition in this post. Aside from the name-changes I am posting the essay as-is, minor grammatical mistakes and all - no matter how much they hurt me inside. ;-)

 

 

Buried

 By Rachelle Neveu

000

“If I speak of death
which you fear now, greatly,
it is without answers,
except that each
one we know is
in our blood.
Don't recall graves.
Memory is permanent.
Remember the afternoon's
yellow suburban annunciation.
Your goalie
in his frightening mask
dreams perhaps
of gentleness.”

 

– Michael Ondaatje, To a Sad Daughter

000 

It takes my father ten minutes to tell me that my uncle is dead.

It’s almost one in the morning and I’ve just come home from work, still in my uniform and insanely tired, to find my father lounging on the couch in our family room and watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live. I have to get up for school in approximately six hours, but it feels so much easier to just sit in front of the television and let my brain wind down, so I stay downstairs.

“This is a good one,” I say, stepping on the heels of my work shoes and kicking them to the rug over by the door. “They do this one sketch where it’s like Family Feud, only between the Osmonds and Mackenzie Phillips and her family, but it’s so incredibly awkward that it’s awesome.”

“Is it?” My father doesn’t look at me as I cross in front of the couch to take a seat on the recliner. On the television Ryan Reynolds makes some snide-yet-chipper comment about the girl playing Marie never getting married, while the “Phillips Family” gives increasingly uncomfortable answers to what fathers and daughters do together. It’s nice to laugh at something so absurd; I’d just spent seven hours in Lockport having to continually force thieving teenagers and jittery crack addicts out of a store that was leaking more than a colander filled with water. Anything, even Ryan Reynolds snarking at the camera, is a better alternative.

“I’m going to get a drink,” I say. “Pause it for me?”

“Sure, kiddo.” He reaches blindly for the remote on the coffee table in front of him. “Oh, and Rach? You should know that Barry died.”

I freeze by the end of the couch, chewing my lip. “When?”

“Not too long ago. Valerie called around midnight…maybe earlier.”

I try to think about where I was that day; where I’d been when my uncle’s time finally ran out. I was at the Wilson Farms, more than likely cashing out a customer or avoiding the leak over the cash register or teasing my manager about his “bro-mance” with one of the other managers. I’d skipped my math class earlier in the day and gone to lunch and Barnes & Noble, instead.

I have so many words in my head, so many things I want to ask, but all I can think to say is, “I’m going to bed.”

“Sure, sure,” murmurs my father. His eyes are glazed over and tired, his attention turned back to the TV. It is almost two o’clock in the morning and this revelation regarding Barry O’Brien wasn’t unexpected. We’d known – we had all known – that his time was running out, ever since the doctors diagnosed him with mesothelioma earlier in the summer. We’d all been on a deathwatch since June and it felt like I had been holding my breath for five long months, just waiting for something to happen.

I didn’t sleep. I watched the hands on my alarm clock tick in perfect circles, counting down the minutes until I had to get ready for school.

 000 

I have never seen a dead body before.

This is what I think about as I drive into Rochester with my father four days later for the wake. My mother’s family is all Russian Jews and when someone dies, they bury the body right away. They don’t stuff it full of formaldehyde and put it on display like a mannequin – they bury them with respect and mourn by sitting shivah for a week. The mirrors are covered and the pictures turned to the wall and everyone sits on cushions while they tell stories about their loved one. Even now, the whole act of a wake feels very strange and foreign; this entire ordeal is a stamp in a passport I wasn’t sure I wanted.

It is a long trip, and neither I nor my father talks much on the way. Tessa is still away at school and can't make it home for the funeral, while my mother is conspicuous only in her absence; the lack of her usual chatterboxing is far too obvious in the quiet. She told my father that she couldn’t take off from work the day of the wake (and she told me she didn’t want to go), but she promised that she would drive up the next day for the funeral with my grandmother.

When we finally arrive in Rochester, I don’t know what to expect when we walk through the sliding glass doors. The carpet of the funeral home is ugly, some generic green-and-yellow parquet pattern, and the peeling green wallpaper is just as bad. If we were anywhere else, I would nudge my dad and make some comment about the state of the building, and we would laugh about it for the rest of the trip. All my words seem to die in my throat as we enter the main room, where my aunt stands at the end of a long receiving line and a heavy mahogany coffin takes up all the space.

Barry’s kids – Shannon, Shelley, John – give my father and I tired smiles as we shake their hands and give our condolences. My aunt doesn’t respond when my dad says her name, just looks at us both with wide, glassy eyes as her brother pulls her into a hug.

“Val,” is all he says when they part, and she just shrugs in response.

Two steps to the right is the coffin. My dad squeezes my aunt’s hand before another set of grieving family members nudge us out of the way, and my father puts a hand on my back as we walk towards the casket. I am afraid, but I don’t have any strength for protesting, so I let my father steer me along and I try to swallow the lump in my throat.

It doesn’t look like my uncle – my uncle was bright and vibrant, laughing and joking and grinning and not this. This is not the man who loved my aunt like no one else, who took my father on a golf weekend in Florida, who encouraged me to travel the world. The creature in the coffin, a rosary clutched in one hand and a green tie around his neck, looks like some sort of waxwork vampire. I stand awkwardly by the cushioned step where everyone else has been kneeling to pray, wishing that I knew something in Hebrew besides prayers for wine and latkes and that stupid Shabbat Shalom song that always gets stuck in my head when I don’t need it.

My father still has his hand on my back and lowers his head, murmuring all the right words he’d learned in Catholic school, and I just feel lost.

After the service is over, we stand around the funeral home without any sure sense of what we are doing. My father is talking to the priest and the undertaker with my aunt in low, hushed voices, and my cousins, Gina and Lisa, have stepped out from the room to carry all the flower arrangements out to their respective cars. I stand by myself in the doorway, trying to look away from where the body is laid out and failing rather spectacularly; this is still so new, so strange.

Barry’s oldest daughter, Shannon, is kneeling next to the coffin, her head bowed over the open casket and her father’s claw-like hand clasped tight in hers. John and Shelley are off to the side, taking turns holding Shannon’s own daughter and trying to keep the four-year-old entertained while her mother cries. I want to take the seat next to her, to hold Shannon’s hand and let her know that things will be alright, but I am frozen in my spot by the door and I can’t seem to will my feet to move.

The undertaker steps forth after my aunt turns away from him, announcing that they are going to close the coffin and prepare it for the burial the next day. My father steps towards me, taking me by the elbow and gently pulling me away from the door.

“Do you want to say goodbye?”

Shannon is still sitting next to the casket, and I look at my father with wide eyes; this isn’t my family. This isn’t my blood. I’m a visitor in this land, a stranger in the street with no claim to their grief.

“No.” I shake my head. “No, I’m fine.”

The coffin lid shuts with a dull and empty thud.

000 

That night, we arrive at my aunt’s house separately, my father in one car with my aunt and myself and my two cousins in another, and for a long time we just sit quietly around the dining room table. My father and I brought the last of the roses from our garden back home – long, thorny-stemmed things that hang heavy with pink blossoms – which spill over the lip of vase my Aunt Valerie puts them in. They are all I can focus on as my cousins pour everyone endless glasses of wine, the rosy blooms standing brightly in the dimly lit room.

“Rachelle is almost old enough,” Lisa says when my father makes a noise of protest. “She’s got two more months until she’s twenty-one. For now, we’re just rounding up.”

My dad chuckles and I raise my glass in mock celebration.

“Where’s Jane?” My aunt lifts her eyes from her glass to meet my gaze. This is the first she’s spoken all night, and it’s a little jarring after hours of stony silence. “Wasn’t your mother supposed to come with you two?”

It’s an odd question for her to ask; my father once compared the relationship between my mother and my Aunt Valerie to the US and Russia during the Cold War – my mother being Russia, stubborn and cold, and my aunt as America, arrogant and loud. My father tells her why my mother couldn’t make it, and I hear myself say, “Mom’s bringing Grandma with her tomorrow.” My aunt makes a face and I bite back a laugh. “We should be careful. That much concentrated evil is sure to explode the second it sets foot inside a church.”

The people around the table chuckle, but I can tell their hearts aren’t in it. Usually, any opportunity to tease my father about the crazy Jewish family he married into is never wasted. My aunt always ribs him about his in-laws – my domineering, ex-nightclub-singer grandmother and quiet, accountant grandfather – but tonight…tonight they let my comments slide, let my mother’s side of my insane family tree go unscathed. I chew the inside of my cheek and take a sip of wine, suppressing the urge to spit it back out again. It tastes like rust, like blood.

“You’re more Italian than anything,” my father says suddenly. He reaches out and cups my cheek with his hand. “You’re more like us than anyone else.”

I have no idea how to respond to that, so I just smile.

My aunt sets her elbows on the table and holds her head in her hands.

 000 

The morning of the funeral is bright and beautiful; the sun is out and the sky is a clear shade of blue, with a cool breeze gently blowing across the grass in soft, rippling waves. It is a perfectly lovely October day.

We leave in my father’s car – him in his good blue suit, me in a black dress and ill-fitting shoes – and I hold the roses on my lap as we drive to the church. I have only been to a church twice in my life, Gina’s wedding and a choir concert in high school, and if it were any other day I would be excited to take part in a Catholic service. Today, all I feel is ill.

My aunt walks up the steps to meet with the priest and Barry’s children, and my father sets me the task of finding my mother and grandmother – both of whom were supposed to meet us at my aunt’s house and instead chose to go straight to the church.

I wander through the parking lot in my awkward high-heeled shoes, the heels clacking loudly against the pavement as I search for my mother’s car. They are long since gone, and I resign myself to clunking back towards the church entrance with my armful of roses.

I see my grandmother first, a bright spot of green set against a sea of black. It takes me a moment to process why this is, but then it hits me all at once: she is wearing a bright green pantsuit to a funeral. My grandmother is not a bad person, not completely, but she is absolutely tactless. After learning where we are sitting, my mother contentedly falls back into the role of doting, demure daughter and lets my grandmother lead her around like a dog on a leash. They make stilted conversation with my uncle’s family, giving their condolences and moving on as quickly as possible; only to then complain that no one will talk to them. I clutch the roses tighter in my hands and try to remind myself that I am about to enter God’s House – He would not like it if I murdered someone and got blood all over His foyer.

Nadia, Shelley’s partner, gives me a tired smile when she catches me muttering to myself – “Sweet Zombie Jesus, why are you all embarrassing me?” – and whispers something about that being a family’s job. It is a nice little bit of normalcy, but the feeling does not last long.

We sit in the third row reserved for family, right behind Barry’s last living siblings. The service, what little I can remember, is lovely. The priest says all the right words, all the comforting stories of love and loss and living beyond this world, and I can feel myself falling under the spell of his voice; finally understanding why they call religion the “opium of the masses.” My father bows his head for a prayer and I spare a glance towards my mother and grandmother, sitting at the very end of the pew. My mother looks bored; my grandmother is checking her watch.

I grasp the roses so tight that the thorns leave marks on my skin.

 000

I have never seen my father cry before.

I’ve watched my mother get teary-eyed at movies and full-on sob when her sister called to tell us their father was dead, but I have never before seen my father cry. The priest calls for the pallbearers to take up their positions and shakily, my father rises to his feet. He takes the handle of the casket and whatever glue held him together these past few days is rapidly falling away. He brings a fist to his mouth as fat, heavy tears roll down his cheeks, and I can feel my heart breaking in two.

My father helps to carry the casket out through the church, past the dozens of other mourners that filled the benches in the service, and as soon as my aunt and Barry’s children have passed, I join the procession that files out the door – head held high despite my tears, my roses held up like a shield before me.

The coffin is lifted into the back of a hearse and my father is still breaking down, looking for my mother, but she is still inside the church. I walk up to him and hug him tightly; role reversal at it’s finest. He pats my head and his words are gone, and when my aunt taps him on the shoulder he turns. My mother and grandmother stand silently on the steps of the church, set apart from everyone in a division of their own making.

The drive to the cemetery is longer and quieter than the one on the way to the funeral home, but I do not feel my mother’s absence now.

000

The falcon takes everyone by surprise.

We are all gathered at the entrance to the plot, waiting only on the hearse driver to unlock the back door so that we may carry my uncle to his final resting place. Relatives of Barry’s who I have never met lean on each other in their grief, while I stand by my father and try to stay calm. It really is a beautiful day, and the leaves on the trees around us are a thousand shades of gold.

The falcon lands on the branch of a tree that extends right over the hearse, and before I can stop myself, I call out a loud, “What the hell?”

I clap my hand over my mouth, but it is too late. The silence grows even more pronounced around us as every eye in the cemetery turns towards the falcon, who preens and ruffles his feathers while watching us with steady eyes. He stares at us all for what feels like hours, and when he finally takes flight I realize that I have been holding my breath.

 “It means something,” Shelley keeps saying. Her eyes and nose are as red as her hair and Nadia just nods and holds her hand, gently leading her towards the gravesite. “It means that everything’s okay. Irish myths and all that – falcons mean bravery and hope and it means that he’ll be all right.”

000 

At the reception, it feels like over a hundred people have crammed themselves into Shelley and Nadia’s house. It is impossible to breathe, let alone find a chair, so I push my way through the crowd until I find myself alone on the front porch. The day is turning colder and grayer as the sun slowly sets into the trees beyond the house, but I can’t bring myself to go back inside. I sit on one of the two rocking chairs on the porch and try not to think about the day.

When my grandfather died, I was eleven years old and still considered far too young to go to the actual funeral. Thirteen was the cut-off, my grandmother had said, and my mother was too distraught to disagree. I sat in my grandmother’s living room with my sister and my younger cousins, perched on the arm of my grandfather’s leather easy chair and trying to wrap my mind around what was going on. My cousins and my sister were immersed in cartoons while the neighbor watching us talked on the phone with her daughter, and all I could focus on was the fact that everything looked the same.

Even though they weren’t facing forward, the photographs were still on the wall. The pool was still uncovered in the backyard. The chair was in the same place, but its owner wouldn’t be there to sit in it anymore. I felt grief, but it was smaller, more subdued. I couldn’t understand how everything could be so normal now – not when two nights before my mother’s tears had woken me up in the middle of the night, not when right that moment, my grandfather was six feet underground.

I press my hands to my eyes, trying to hide them from the fading sunlight that is shining down upon me. I turn towards the house, hoping that might help save me from the glare, but through the window I can see my aunt sitting by herself in the now-empty dining room, her head once again held in her hands. The dining room is cut off by big folding doors that lead into the kitchen, where everyone else is gathering while Shannon and John dish out food, and just as I am about to knock on the window, my grandmother walks into the room.

At first, I think she’s going to say something. She moves towards my aunt’s chair, arm outstretched like she is about to reach out and touch her shoulder, but at the last minute seems to change her mind. My grandmother – my brash, tactless, ultimately loving grandmother, who knows what it’s like to lose a husband, who knows what it’s like to feel to feel empty and lost – walks right by my Aunt Val, not even giving the obviously upset woman a passing glance. She shuts the door behind her as she walks back into the kitchen and a wave of anger rips right through me.

It’s not fair. Not fair, not fair, not fair, and all I want to do is cry like people do in the movies; mascara running down a splotchy face, with reddened eyes and tear-stained tissues piling up around me. I want to shear my hair, warble through a funeral march, find a pet cemetery straight out of Stephen King and just make the roaring, angry monster clawing at my insides shut up. There are rocks all along the edge of the porch – little decorative stones that say things like peace and hope and believe – and I just want something to smash. I grab faith from the post by the steps and hurl it as hard as I can at the tree in the front yard. The stone rattles against the branch it hit and a handful of yellow leaves fall to the ground.

 I am ready to throw harmony higher when from nowhere, a falcon lands on the nearest branch, staring down at me with bright amber eyes. My voice is caught in my throat – I want to call out, for someone else to see this and to believe that it happened – but I can barely breathe for the sight of it. This isn’t the falcon from the gravesite, but it is so eerily similar in size and coloring that I almost convince myself that it is. The falcon regards me coolly as it ruffles its feathers, as if it is wondering why I am so upset, but after a few moments it rights its head.

It spreads its wings and takes off for the forest just beyond the house, leaving me to stand there, speechless and still and somehow just knowing that somehow, things will all turn out all right in the end. The world isn’t going to stop spinning, the sun will still shine, and whatever else happens, we will all figure out how to pick up the pieces. However long it takes, we will find a way to carry on.

This is only a temporary loss.

Everything will be okay.