I AM SORRY FOR THIS

I recently paid a surprise visit to the North East. This visit was not of my own design, it was a surprise schemed by the Good Lord when he sucked my grandfather back into the great big somewhere. I was told, by my father, that they had all been in the room and that my grandfather had been complaining all day, pointing at the door of his hospital room shouting, “The light! the light!” and then repeated the birthday of his deceased son again and again.

Then his heart stopped going thump-thump. There was a thump, and then another thump, and then a quiet invisible thump where there should have been a for real thump. And so I flew home, watching the presidential debates on an airplane like a millionaire. The flight attendant approaching me, “Would you like another top hat, sir?”

(PS: Flight attendants have a code word for when they fart as they’re walking up and down the aisle at the center of a plane. It’s called “Crop Dusting”)

And thus began the time called “GRIEVE TIME” where my family members and I donned black clothing and ate lots of meals together. My father always insists that my clothing is too small, that, “YOU SHOULD BE PROUD! YOU’RE A TALL GUY! YOU SHOULD BE SHOPPING AT A BIG AND TALL SHOP!!! AH GOD DAMNIT!!!”

So he took me to a department store and made me try on black suits until one fit me to his liking. It’s funny that he should have picked it out because I felt like a child wearing his father’s clothing. What obscenity, I thought, that I should show up to my grandfather’s funeral dancing around like David Byrne. But dads are “Wearin’ ‘Em Big” these days, so I went along with it.

I had never attended a viewing before, much less been one of the family members, standing at the precipice of the funeral home next to a rented coffin containing someone that helped raise me. It was not a violent sadness really. And infact my sister and my father and I were constantly making jokes.

A SMALL VIGNETTE:
My mother went to the funeral home early to drop off an envelope full of money and, while there, saw her father’s body on accident for the first time. She was shaken, but in good spirits when she got home, so I asked her, “What did he look like?”
She said, “He looked like a white Pap!”
and then, “I leaned over and said to him, ‘Well Dad, you look pretty good for a dead person!’”
and I like that she said that.

Anyway, so I stood there shaking hands until a long time. My grandfather was a big fan of the Nazareth High School Wrestling Team so, as a great show of respect, the entire team attended the viewing. They blew down the line of my black wearing relatives, shaking our hands quickly as though we’d all just bested them in a wrestling tournament. Each hand of these thick-necked wrestlers was, ironically, like a dead fish. My sister and I discussed this and came up an explanation. Their coach probably usually says, “Give ‘em a good ole firm hand shake!” after the match, but before this viewing probably insisted that they, “Tone It Down”. So dead fish. Also one of them, probably the most awkward of them, shook my hand and said to me in his shaky teenager voice, “No Problem!”

That night we went to the Nazareth Diner. I never thought I would set foot in there again. But there I was with my entire family eating french-fries and pie at midnight. The next day was the funeral. I hadn’t seen the pastor of my boyhood in many years. I generally associated him with my teenage atheism, but having become a different person myself, his words worked okay in my head.

Then after each person sitting behind us filed out, my family sauntered up to the casket to say a farewell to his body. My sister and I went up first and then my cousins and then my mother and Uncle walked up. My uncle was a gruff man and I had never seen him cry before. My mother’s crying made me feel sad, and so I looked back to my grandfather’s placid face and remembered that it was not a sad thing for really. Then also my grandmother leaned and kissed him, making a pop sound of a kiss. This sound struck me because it felt like that sound stood in well for that first, anticipated thump. If I were smarter I could make a poem about it.