One wedding and a funeral.
Grandma passed away without alarm the day after her 78th birthday. The surrounding family said The Lord's Prayer over her bed before the hospice nurse dressed her in a lavender sweater, powdered her nose, and slicked a coat of color over her lips. The Cremation Society arrived shortly thereafter to feed her to the fire.
The funeral was tasteful, filled with meatballs and sensible shoes, just as I knew it would be. The programs I made, complete with removable photo-quality pictures, were a huge success. The pastor made a lot of vague references and, as they always do, reached and reached to make sense of the senseless for the grieving. He likened her life to the tiny boxes she made and sold at the craft store to help supplement their meager means. I was uncomfortable with such a long life being reduced to arts and crafts, but no one else seemed to be, so I suppose it doesn't matter.
Grandma's friend DeeDee, or, as she legally renamed herself, Butterfly Christian, took to the stage to sing us a few cuts from the gospel album she recorded against all odds. Even losing her children in process, the judge declaring "illusions of grandeur", DeeDee never stopped demanding to be a country superstar. Even after losing a lifelong friend and probably her biggest, most sincere fan, Butterfly Christian clucked and twanged through "Amazing Grace" and "A Closer Walk With Thee", wearing her best TimeLife Country Gold smile and platinum wig.
Though seated at a babygrand piano, hands poised to play, mic drawn near to her frosted pastel mouth, no sound came from either. Instead, when the music began, it came from the surround sound and boasted those prerecorded '70s gospel gems she had so lovingly referred. DeeDee lipsynced. Not only did she lipsync, she lipsyned to a projected video background of baby woodland creatures nestled in the dewy grass. In a lot of ways, DeeDee saved us from ourselves. The subdued Lutheran laughter and still, somehow, geniune appreciation, bled through the stained glass and forced me to take a deep breath for the first time in days. How sweet the sound, indeed.
Benjamin Harris and Kelly Connely joined together in holy matrimony August 23rd, 2008, at 3:30pm in the Lyndale Rose Gardens. The programs had that much correct, anyway. If they were to be redone by say, me, they would have read, "Come join Harris and Kelly at the Lyndale Rose Gardens as they exhange vows no one can hear over the jet takeoff, strike symbolic singing bowls to the revving of a large bus, see the precious flower girl throw down roses to a Jeep blasting Usher, and be surrounded by randomsters riding their bikes and tanning in the background. 3:30 PM, if you found a place to park, that is."
All kidding aside to save my own skin, the wedding was very nice. It was everything a Fridley boy and and Anoka girl could ever want. The reception, however, was the heavy-hitter in terms of memorable merriment.
Standing in dollar store sunglasses and ill-fitting suit, Dan was not only completely in the bag by the time I arrived the reception hall, he was having a hell of a time finding his way out of it. Apparently a large quantity of bottom-shelf rum, beer, and whatever else novelty wedding liquor was consumed in the wedding party limo. Dan, being everso thrifty, chugged what no one else could endure as to let it not go to waste. And go to waste it didn't.
As much as I'd like to say the reception was about Harris and Kelly, all the stories are about Dan. From his incessant complimenting of my pretty hair and tastefully chosen Target apparel, to his severe wedding/baby want. He went so far as to drunkenly perform a Jedi mind trick on me in which he was impregnating me from across the table, over the tiny boxes of candy and ham buns. His obsession with wanting to be a father only grew as the night went on. Kristina managed to take an amazing video of Dan hassling the baby sitting next to him in which he keeps touching its head and trying to feed it things. When told to stop touching people's babies, Dan replied with the Quote of the Night:
"DON'T.............EVER.......TELL ME WHAT BABIES I CAN TOUCH."
From then on the highlights included Noah and Monique demonstrating their swing dancing skills to Bill Haley and the Commets and other such long-forgotten relics of black and white TVs and sock hops. It was only then that I truly admitted to myself that we have friends who swing dance. I always assumed they were just going out every Tuesday night to get trashed and go to Lookout Point in the Fairlane. But no. They were on. In full swing.
Stu chose to spend the evening talking to Elder Harris about some chemical compound and the rest of us spent the evening tapping out the free beer and making people do the Macerena. At some point near the end of the evening, Dan asked me to marry him, placing his size 15 beer-opening ring over two of my fingers, and promptly forgetting where his ring went.
I don't know if starting out brand new makes any more sense to me than dying. If anything, it seems about the same. It's uncertain just when and how and why, but we all know we're going to get through it. Some of us buckle down and prepare for the worst, enduring the turbulance white-knuckled, while some of us chose to go balls-out and laugh at how silly everyone's problems really are. I've always admired those kinds of people more. I'm pretty into the fact that those people are now my people, and I, theirs. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, as long as we all shall live. Let's party.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Generous Donations of Someone Else's Money
Smashing her computer closed, she pinched her colorless lips together and eyed my mother with a practiced filth. It’s hard to say how long she’d known about the two of them. There are 10 years worth of pictures in our coffee table drawers, and more if you count the ‘70s, but Christ. Who would ever do that? Anyway, I don’t know what they keep in their coffee table at home, but I’d be willing to bet it was stupid and un-heartwarming.
My mother stood in the doorway, shrieking down the sterilized walls to her about being conscious in an unconscious world. About smashing your face between two Bibles, about stuffing sage under your fingernails, about burning incense into your retinas. But she had disappeared into the background of industrial fabrics and janitor’s keys, so I motioned her back into the room. Let it go.
His skin was a hymnal. Death had settled into his eyes, which were wet and agonizing. “We’re way, way off base,” and he pushed the meat off his bun and reached for my mother’s hands. I backed up to better observe. His face is a eulogy. No, no, much too removed. I should be more in the moment. I should say something about how there just isn’t any time or how yellow it is to act so hurt when someone is literally breathing their last breaths right in front of you. I can’t, though. I really just wanted him to have a nicer hamburger. I really just wished he could have had salt, instead of that Mrs. Dash bullshit.
We could have buried three Lutherans in the time it took for High Mass. There were no ham buns in the basement. No assortment of bereavement bars, and I didn’t really get all the kneeling and shit. The 21-gun salute was flaccid, but she and my mother stood over the casket, whimpering and shivering in the fur coats he had bought them years earlier.
The ground opened beneath him, to lower him to his eternal resting place, America’s biggest mall gleaming like the gates of St. Peter behind us. I shoved my hands in my pockets and mumbled along when the Catholics spoke in unison. Amen. Peace be with you. And also with you. And where might I get a nice hamburger around here?
The juice ran down the side of my hand and several napkins were required. I balled them up on my empty plate, satisfied. My mother swallowed two Xanax without water before paying the check. We drove without the radio. We imagined ourselves as priests, singing hymns off the faces of corpses and carving Eucharist from their soft inner arms and placing it on our tongues. We were removed and we were conscious. I pushed sage under the skin and she lit the incense, carefully packing the ash into his mouth. I covered the casket with my robe and stood naked in the colored light of a stained glass saint. Peace be with you. And also with you.
My mother stood in the doorway, shrieking down the sterilized walls to her about being conscious in an unconscious world. About smashing your face between two Bibles, about stuffing sage under your fingernails, about burning incense into your retinas. But she had disappeared into the background of industrial fabrics and janitor’s keys, so I motioned her back into the room. Let it go.
His skin was a hymnal. Death had settled into his eyes, which were wet and agonizing. “We’re way, way off base,” and he pushed the meat off his bun and reached for my mother’s hands. I backed up to better observe. His face is a eulogy. No, no, much too removed. I should be more in the moment. I should say something about how there just isn’t any time or how yellow it is to act so hurt when someone is literally breathing their last breaths right in front of you. I can’t, though. I really just wanted him to have a nicer hamburger. I really just wished he could have had salt, instead of that Mrs. Dash bullshit.
We could have buried three Lutherans in the time it took for High Mass. There were no ham buns in the basement. No assortment of bereavement bars, and I didn’t really get all the kneeling and shit. The 21-gun salute was flaccid, but she and my mother stood over the casket, whimpering and shivering in the fur coats he had bought them years earlier.
The ground opened beneath him, to lower him to his eternal resting place, America’s biggest mall gleaming like the gates of St. Peter behind us. I shoved my hands in my pockets and mumbled along when the Catholics spoke in unison. Amen. Peace be with you. And also with you. And where might I get a nice hamburger around here?
The juice ran down the side of my hand and several napkins were required. I balled them up on my empty plate, satisfied. My mother swallowed two Xanax without water before paying the check. We drove without the radio. We imagined ourselves as priests, singing hymns off the faces of corpses and carving Eucharist from their soft inner arms and placing it on our tongues. We were removed and we were conscious. I pushed sage under the skin and she lit the incense, carefully packing the ash into his mouth. I covered the casket with my robe and stood naked in the colored light of a stained glass saint. Peace be with you. And also with you.
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