Ending An Era: Part V - The Funeral

I hadn't listened to music since I'd gotten the news, and I don't know why, I know how important music is to me.
So when I got in the car to go to the funeral, I turned up the radio and thought what should be played will.

I'd taken on Bruce Springsteen "Born To Run" as the story of my life nearly two years ago when I first decided I was ready to leave Cleveland. I cried when I heard it in the car. I knew that I'd lost the last thing keeping me in this city in Grampa, and it was time to start the leaving process.



This song came out about four years ago; Christina had written it for her dad after he died, and I could never listen to it all the way through because it made me think of losing my dad and the realization that I would eventually lose Grampa. I listened and drove and cried and heard it all for the first time.




The Eagles were one of Dad's favourite bands, and when I hear them I think of him and the beautiful American South that with him, I could accept. I found the serenity I needed to get the rest of the way to the funeral home without an accident.




I arrived early so I could see Grampa and be alone with the family I thought was mine. I walked in, C barely said hi, M did say hi, but otherwise no one spoke. Lost in our own thoughts, or just had nothing to say to me. I allowed myself to cry but kept it to a minimum, it's not like I really felt comfortable having emotions in front of this family.
Others started to arrive, co-workers, friends, and the extended family, the K's. I felt relieved by my friends and co-workers. By the time both my supervisors showed, I was feeling as relaxed as is possible in this type of situation.

The K's are technically Gramma's family, Grampa's wife. She was a K and her brother was my Great-Uncle Art, the patriarch/father/grandfather of the K's that remain. I grew up visiting them like any other family does, and, like any other family does, as we grow up, go to college, get jobs, acquire families, we dont see them as much. After enough years of this, you drift apart from them. I still spoke to Uncle Art, called him a few times a year; he was definitely my favourite of the K's, mostly because he had opinions and spoke his mind, and was funny as hell. Grampa used to bitch about Uncle Art's "big mouth"; I would just laugh and think that must be where I inherited my colourful language abilities from.
When my dad died, not one of that family, Grampa or my uncles, even called to say they were sorry to hear about my dad. They never acknowledged that I had a relationship with my dad when he was alive, and to my knowledge none of them had any problem with my dad, so I never really understood why that was the case and never really thought much of it. I did talk to my aunt, M, the whole time I was dealing with Dad's illness and death and she was as supportive as she could be and I was entirely grateful, but the others, not a single bloody word.
Uncle Art had hated my dad, and hated him enough that my dad had told me after I met him about how much Uncle Art hated him. Art and his sister, my grandmother, both hated my dad because he just wasn't good enough for my mother. But after Dad died and I came home, Uncle Art gave me all the pictures he had of my dad, a man he hated, not because he felt guilty but because that was my father and he respected the relationship I had with him, something my closer blood-relatives didn't have the balls or the respect for me to do.
When Uncle Art died, I felt like I'd lost my only connection to the K's. They had all grown up, had kids of their own, they were people I didn't know anymore. And because I had felt the strain between myself and my immediate family and never understood what their problem with me was, I felt like the K's were doing the same, that they couldn't relate to me because I was so different and had decided I was useless. And I felt i couldn't relate to them.
But here we were at my own Grampa's funeral and slowly I started to notice that I could talk to them, and amazingly enough, they were talking to me back. For so many years I felt like they were strangers, but now, they were talking to me not only like I was a person, but someone they knew, someone they could relate to, and then I realized the family I thought I didn't have was coming out of the woodwork in the form of the family I didn't expect.

No one mentioned the Super Bowl. I had thought we would all watch it together. Uncle K is also a Packers fan, so I figured he'd want to watch, but considering how the last few days had gone, I wasn't even sure they would bother, but I forced the issue. I went back to C and M's house with every intention of watching the game. they did finally turn it on, and I may have well just watched it by myself, I sat in the chair turned away from them, trying to stay as absorbed in the game as I could. All the excitement I'd had all season watching my Packers get to this game had gone out the window, watching the Super Bowl seemed much more a formality. C sat on the couch the whole game, rooting for the goddamn Steelers. He's a Browns fan, so what he was doing was pretty much blasphemy, and he kept saying over and over "I don't know why I'm rooting for the Steelers." "I don't know why I'm rooting for the Steelers. I want them to make a game of it though." "I don't know why I'm rooting for the Steelers." You're rooting for the Steelers because I'm sitting here and you're just trying to upset me because deep down you can't stand me.

The next day was the cemetery proceedings. It was a beautiful Masonic ceremony, I rode in the limo mostly silent while the other members of the family made small talk and my youngest cousin, E, made us laugh some. The last time I'd made this trip in the limo was to bury my mother nineteen years earlier, on a November day just as cold and bleak as this February one. My very ill sister K made it out to the cemetery. The funeral director gave Grampa's military flag to aunt M and I smiled as wide as my mouth could go; she did a lot to take care of Grampa and she deserved that flag.

I rode back with K so I could smoke cigarettes and talked to her about how I was feeling. We drove back to C and M's for the after-funeral get-together, and lucky for me the K's were already there when we arrived. K was worried about leaving me alone in C and M's house with them; she was aware of all the tension going on, but after i introduced her to the K's she said she felt well enough leaving me with them that she soon left.
The K's had brought photo books, and for the first time since I was a teenager, I remembered being one. I was amazed and almost frightened at how much of my early life I'd forgotten. I'm not the type of person that ever reflects on or longs for the past; the "good ol' days" should keep on happening. My childhood wasn't all bad, but even the good things I'd forgotten about, maybe because no one in my life now was there then to remind me.
C had apparently been to Grampa's house looking for pictures, and at the get-together, pulled out the photos of my mother and dad's wedding. He'd used some in the collage he made for Grampa, so I knew he had taken the book from Grampa. We were in the living room and I said, "So, can I take those pictures?"
And C said, "No, you can't."
I was stunned, so stunned that he'd actually said no. And his reason shook me to the very core of my being.
"Well, these photos were in my father's possession and that's my sister, and you're her daughter, so who trumps who?"
You monster. You fucking son of a bitch. You're a piece of shit and I'm sorry it's Grampa we just buried and not you....
Because I don't have the ability to be that disrespectful to people, I chose to joke that him and I could go out back and beat the crap out of each other and whoever wins gets the pictures.
That's the marriage of my mother and my father, both of my dead parents, and because you never acknowledged that I had a relationship with my father, of course you wouldn't think of that. That's the marriage I was born out of, you ignorant motherfucker, I trump you about five times over.
I had to let it go just for a while, but I told M what he'd done and she said she'd get the book back for me, and then asked me if there was anything else I wanted out of the house.
"I see myself getting pushed out of this family, so i have to say no, if I get away with an ashtray I'll be happy."

Again, as they'd done the day before, the K's talked to me like a real person, not a stranger, but someone that was family. They told me that yes, I was a teenager at one time. They talked to me about ho I was, who my mother was, who Grampa was, who they were. And I felt like I was surrounded by family. People who knew I existed and actually thought it was a good thing. I remembered Hatsuko, the Japanese foreign exchange student who lived with them and came swimming with us in Grampa's pool when I was a kid. I remembered having poofy 80's hair, and the house in Parma that the K's grew up in. It was like I had blocked all these memories, but it's not like they were bad memories, so I don't understand why I didn't remember them.
But they came flooding back like a head rush, and beside me was the family who remembered them too....



**FYI that my sisters K and K are half-sisters through my dad and therefore no relation to Grampa.