Nana’s Funeral

I suppose I was one of the lucky.  That is what I’ve heard it called anyway, lucky, fortunate, even blessed.  I’m sure I was all these things as was my father as were his brothers and their children.  All certainly blessed.  For we had something many do not – Nana.  She was my great grandmother, and this was perhaps the foundation of my blessedness.   I am unsure as to whether I am blessed, lucky, what have you, because an ancient well of wisdom lay in the wrinkly flesh for our family’s use, or whether it is because I got to tell other kids, with some sniveling pride, that I still had a great grandmother while their mere grandmothers were dead some years now, or if my luck or blessedness was simply because somebody in my family lived that long, and maybe like an immortal rash it would spread across the limbs of my father’s family tree and prolong all our lives. After quick exploration of all these options, I concluded the last to be the most workable.  Nana was not really a pit of wisdom.  She spent most of Christmas stating and restating the names of us younger kids and our respective ties: Shannon, you’re Bobby’s girl, Emily – no Stephanie, you’re Brian – no you’re Steven’s daughter, Brian you’re Brian’s and so on.  After she remembered sometimes all of us, sometimes not, she’d give us all God’s blessing and tell us how pretty we were, even Aidan who was as round and ruddy as a tomato.  Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps this is why we were blessed.  Maybe the old, the very old do that.

Needless to say, I never knew Nana well.  There were times I tried to get on her good side, I admit.  I would say god bless her quietly and when no one was looking at the Christmas gatherings.  (I was an atheistic child and found this to be somewhat arousing, this is why I said it so quietly.)  I would even touch her hand, I am sure so lightly and afraid that she in her craziness did not feel me.  I was ashamed of these things, I had ulterior motives.  It was much like the relationship between me and a friend’s pet.  I like my friend, mind even love my friend, but something strange would come over me when in the presence of some speechless character who has, despite its being mute, still the capability to show affection.  To choose is how I thought of it.  I spent many minutes desperately trying to communicate telepathically with my friend’s animals:  “I love you kitty.  I love you.  I know you want to be free.  I’m sorry you are held captive. I love you and understand you, cat.  Now . . . come here.  Come here.  No, don’t go over there.  No.  She doesn’t understand as well, you know that cat, I love you.  I understand animals, yes, yes come here, here, not there . . .”

This is how it was with Nana and me.  “I love you Nana, I know you don’t remember me, remember me, Shannon, Bobby’s girl,  Shaaa-non.  You will say my name right next time, remember me Nana, I love you Nana, I am the relative that understands crazy people.”   And so on.  Perhaps this impulse to telepathically coax myself into a position of fondness with Nana could use some further explanation.  My father and I were always a bit different from the rest of the family.  Come to think of it, my mother and I are different from her family as well – another day.

My dad was raised in Dorchester.  This is now the ghetto of Boston.  This is now the ghetto of Boston.  When my dad was growing up it was just a tough neighborhood – mostly Irish.  Once the “other” immigrants, namely Mexican and Vietnamese, came to Dorchester, all the Irish moved to South Boston, aka Southie.  Now we go to Southie for Christmas.

It all began in grade school for my father.  You can see it in this one family portrait.  There stand the three brothers – Brian, Steven, and Michael.  All these three are grinning, a little stupidly, happy go lucky, like brothers.  I’m not saying they were identical, not so.  Brian was rounder and his eyebrows raised higher than the rest. (He is Aidan’s father and Brian’s and Emily’s, husband of Gail.)  Steven’s  face is the blankest of them all, oh sure he’s smiling, just a little unaware, teeth a little crooked.  (He is the father of Stephanie, Alex, Liam, and Marissa, husband of Elaine.)  Michael is the youngest, and perhaps like all Boston Irish families he looks that way, like the youngest.  Innocent, mischievous enough for intelligence and of course he was thought to be the most attractive of the four.  Then there is my dad, Robert named after his father.  Bobby to this day.  He couldn’t have been more than six years old, and there he stood, shadowed eyes sad, hopeful brow, in a bow tie and jacket looking like Dostoevsky.  No kidding, I thought, Dostoevsky – as grave and crazy as he must have been standing before the czar’s firing squad – my dad – thrust amidst the fighting Irish.  He says he looks more like the nutty professor.  We agree to differ.

As time progressed, this strange gap seemed only to widen.  His brothers all played sports.  My dad took his turn, he was fast on skates, fast running the bases – the short ones usually are.  He took his share of injuries.  Bashed his head against the batting bench playing baseball and walked a mile home with it gushing.  This was perhaps as close as he got to his family in childhood.  All the brothers had accidents.  Steven fell out of a tree.  Michael fell out of a nine story window and Brian broke nigh-on his entire body playing hockey; he was the first string goalie.

The difference is, I don’t think my father wanted to pursue injury.  So he turned to the classics, Greek and Latin.  From there he discovered something – the weekly trip to the doughnut shop after church, the weekly Ring Ding, the weekly can of soda pop, the weekly bag of cheese curls, the weekly pot roast and the weekly drunk mom and dad – it was all ridiculous, ridiculous.  All those years of hand-ball and batchi-ball and stick-ball spent wondering if it were all ridiculous were justified.  He also discovered something else; he was smart.  Maybe even smarter than the rest of them.

Granted, Greek led to philosophy and philosophy led to existentialism which proved dangerous for my father.  And I guess in a way he did pursue injury for a while.  Suffered and then met my mother, fell in love and had me.  All this proved enlightening for my father and pains were mended, philosophical and otherwise.

So my dad and I go always to Christmas at his family’s.  (My mother just started to go, something about a bottle, my grandfather and “I can’t stand to set foot in that house” kept her from going until I was about thirteen.)  Mending, I was to discover, is not the same as merging.  I was, I believe, the loser of the cousins.

Being a child and therefore oblivious, I did not recognize this until a few years ago.  My cousin Emily confessed to me, “Yeah you used to wear that white dress with the rose at the hip and fancy shoes.  I hated that, I thought you were a brat.”  I was more wounded than I let on.  I didn’t let on, I laughed maybe nervously mostly knowingly.  Oh that explains it, I thought to myself.

I had always liked to hang out with the adults.  One time my aunt Barbara and I were playing together.  (Michael’s wife)  We were hiding behind a chair waiting for Michael to walk up the stairs, I turned to her and said, “So what do you think of Reagan selling all those guns?”  At the time, I remember thinking how great it was talking and playing all at once and with such a pretty lady.  A few years later, I come to find out she was flabbergasted, and had only the vaguest knowledge of the Iran contra hearings and had to fake it for her eight year old niece.

My cousin Stephanie is more forgiving than my cousin Emily.  She is more sensitive and not as Irish.  Boston Irish for the most part really like each other and don’t really like anybody else.  My mother is not Irish and I have her dark curly hair.

Emily is not Hitler, she just takes a while, that’s all.  I love her.  She’s funny.  When I was sick she came to the hospital and made me laugh.

But I loved that dress.  I always chose wrong.  I could not help but notice this, even in my ignorant bliss.  The differences I recall are three: 1. My dad and I went to church for someone’s communion.  Everyone was crossing themselves, I hadn’t a clue and tried to fake it.  I was embarrassed, to the point of blushing and sweating when my father – who didn’t cross himself either having converted at a young age – caught my eye and raised a brow.  2.  When the New Kids on the Block (who I might add originated in Southie) became famous, I was into U2 and took a lot of flack for my disdain for Jordan, Danny, and the gang.  3.  I don’t have an accent, nor did I ever.  I was always blushing, I guess that is another thing; my face, pink and hot always carried questions with it.  Am I okay?  Am I having an allergic reaction?  Sunburned?  My little cousin once asked me if I was a raccoon, god bless him, nothing like it.

Last year, I saw a video of Stephanie, Emily and I lip-synching.  We loved it equally, but I picture it now and smile.  I, a little girl whose messy hair covered her back in curls, whose small feet wore white patent leather shoes, whose dress was low hipped, polka doted, a silk red rose dangling off the side and her laced tights drooped in the crotch and at the knee.

I was this little girl, small breasts beginning and sweat under arms, standing taller than the two blonde nymphs, thin and blue-eyed doing the right dance moves, two whom I called cousins and me, grinning like an idiot, playing like a gypsy with my untrained fingers waving over my head.

Maybe all this is why I thought Nana should like me best, wanted her to like me best.  I thought then that she did, I know now it was my imagination.  I liked her best in a way; I respected her age.  I wasn’t alone in my wanting, I could see it in my cousins faces, they would light up just as mine did when the wrinkled white-topped creature whom we all called Nana would finally remember our names.

Nana died as unexpectedly as a senile 99 year old woman can die.  Of course we all attended the funeral.  My dad’s cousin, David-the-priest, gave the eulogy.  All went well until the religious recited portion of the service ceased and David-the-priest began to improvise.  He began with Nana and her chocolate cake.  He said it was delicious, he used to sneak bites in the summer.  David was a fat smooth man and I pictured him drooling between tears.  He went on and this is where the service took an odd turn.  “Nana never did anything great, she never did anything important.” (He drew out the great as if he were a volcanic southerner.)  “It was the little things, the little meaningless things that made Nana’s life worth living.”  He seemed to emphasize with great valor words like important, little, and meaningless.  I suppose he was still thinking about cake.  My father and his brothers were all pall bearers.  After the chocolate cake service, they led her out into her hearse.  David swung incense and lucked-out of carrying the coffin.  My dad and I sat in our car waiting for the procession to start.  We were silent for awhile.  And then my dad spoke,  “Nana never did anything Gooood. I can’t believe that was real.”  I laughed and turned on the radio.  Soon the procession started.  It was hot; we rolled down the windows.  An unfortunate thing happened at the red light.  A good song came on.  My dad and I, in a jolly mood, had somewhat, or perhaps entirely, forgotten where we were.  We began to unknowingly sing along.  Red light, absent minded.  The song began to get to the good part and so did we.  How could we have not noticed?  The gray car’s headlights?  The line of our family’s cars surrounding us?  The hearse?  We were interrupted by the vision of my grandparents’ car, wafting by as if on air, staunch, sarcastic jaws agape, awe-filled eyes, wrinkled and expectant, staring out from their car window, rolling down the streets of Boston.  My dad and I dwindled our song out into a funny silence.  Their car passed, I believe they were smiling as they turned the corner.  My father and I looked at each other.  Amazed at our stupidity.

 

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