Don dies
Travelling
With breakfast or without?
— Anonymous Call Center Employee
My mother is the youngest of four children and one of two remaining. Both of her parents are dead. Her last remaining brother is now dying. He broke his hip last year and his heart began to fail in the last few months; when I visited him this summer, fluid was gathering in his lungs and he had to sit up when he slept. We went to church together and I stood when I shouldn’t have: it was the centenary of the church’s founding and they played the “stand if you’ve been a member this long” game and he stood up when they called “fifty years”; I stood with him because his wife was terrified that he might fall again, and now it’s on the video that this young man stood with the old man; I’m the age he was when he joined, and he’s going to die. He’s dying.
I booked a flight back as-soon-as-possible to Charlotte from Syracuse; I leave tomorrow. I don’t have a suit for the funeral, but I’ll probably wear a choir robe: they’re not going to keep me from singing in that choir, goddamnit. And the church will sing for him and I’ll be there; my mother’ll cry and make it all about her (she does that), and Selina (his wife) will keep herself very carefully composed; Karen (a cousin) will do flowers like she did when her father died—the agony of arrangement and selection: he picked the stamens out of the white lillies in the arrangement by the altar for her father because she saw the details and they had to be perfect. And he was still dead. He’s still dying.
So we gather together once again—how odd!—and there’s nothing to be done but hope: my grandmother (whom I never met because she died before I was born) said, “the lord never gives you more than you can bear”, and the oral tradition in the family is that we love Lexie but in this she was wrong. And the infant squeezed to light cries and cries and cries and cries because it’s so bright and so quiet and so cold and so alone—and the lord said “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, but Pilate—and I understand where he was coming from—said “what is truth?” and then “I find no fault in him”. And he still died like we’re all dying like he’s dying even now.
It’s hardest on my mother because of the Swoffords she’s going to be the oldest—there’re the Ballentynes and the Greenoes and the Hudsons and the Gordons and all but of the Swoffords of Lewis and Lexie’s line she’s the oldest. All the cousins will be together again for the first time since the last funeral. And it will be my mother to whom they’ll look because she’s the only one left. Not that she’s the best suited—she’s the baby of the family and makes everything her business, and she’s still that nosy child who hung around with her cool big brother. Because Don (dying) is the closest to her in age and the one who was at home the longest after she was born so they know each other best. And there were just the two of them for a while, then it’ll be just one.
On their first date (when they were fifteen) Don took my mom along with Selina and him to whatever they did (for the details are lost to entropy) because that’s where my mom belonged. I visited Don and Selina this summer (for the brief time I could because they were clearing their affairs, since they knew he was dying) and we spoke closely—it’s from Don that I speak indirectly and circuitously; he was (I already say “was” as though I eulogize but I don’t—that will be my mother’s to do, unless the pastor does it) a solid man who knew what he wanted, and he never said, only suggested. It could be twenty minutes until his point dawned on you, and when you figured it out you saw that it was carefully, delicately woven stuff. He and his wife tell stories that seem to meander (and they fluidly pass the baton as they speak) until a punchline dawns (“don’t hit the bear!”—a story of antics whose details are blurred but the feeling of which is clear) like a sudden scorcio.
I don’t know what I’ll find when I get to Charlotte—probably a lot of waiting, and the sense that there’s nothing we can do to be helpful. I’ll procure some pimento cheese and barbeque and chicken salad and bring it to Selina in the hospital, though I know everyone’ll be doing the same. I’ll sit with him for an hour in the afternoon while he dozes so she can go take a shower. I’ll help my mother plan the funeral (it’s unfortunate that when the LORD speaks to Elijah in 1 Kings 19 The message is so mundane—there’s no great secret in the still, small voice of god after the wind and the earthquake and the fire: it’s just “go back, do these things, and I’ll take care of the rest”—because it would make a perfect reading for Don) like I helped her with her brother’s. But I’m sure that the pastor of the church will take care of it.
I can never sleep the night before a big journey—it’s technically the night before the night before the big journey because I have an overnight layover in Munich, but I fly to Munich tomorrow. Maybe it’s the night before flying that gets me, or the nerves of where I’m going. The family will be there, and they’re smart but weird. Some of them are downright neurotic (though I get that also from my father’s side so it’s twice as bad) but they’re good people, and useful in times of trouble. My cousin Michael and I will be able to talk shop (he’s a real wizard and has been that way for a long time), which will be a good distraction for both of us. But it’s been many moons since we’ve all been together—a bit over two years, when Don and my mother’s oldest sister died. I think it’s a common truism that families are only brought together by funerals.
Christ alive—do you think they’ll expect me to say grace? That was always Don’s job, and he always ended with, “bless this food to our nourishment, and us to thy use. In His name we pray for peace”. Maybe I’ll say “God, give us the patience and faith to withstand the wind, and the earthquake, and the fire, so that we can hear, in the stillness, the soft voice you send to guide us. Let us abide in love, and loving, abide in you. Now bless this food to our nourishment, and us to thy use—in His name we pray for peace.” Amen.
C’est fini
Don is dead. In fact, he had already died when I wrote the last post, but my mother didn’t tell me because there was no way I could have been there. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to be with him and Selina earlier this year; we were able to speak candidly. Selina suddenly seems very young: to her, she was only yesterday a fifteen-year-old girl running about with the Swofford boy, and now he’s dead and she’s alone in the house. He doesn’t feel gone, somehow: it’s as though he stepped out for a minute and will come back in as young and strong as he was when we knew him. In the living room there’s a photo of them walking out of the church on their wedding day: the congregation is all facing forward, away from the camera, and Don and Selina walk towards us; he smiles, proud of the woman on his arm; she smiles, wry at having pinned this man down to her; he has wide lapels on his suit and she is splendid in her white wedding dress. She could still fit into the dress; Don weighed 140 pounds when he died.
Selina’s brother and sister-in-law, Leonard and Linda, are here with Selina at the house; the two couples are a foursome that would have played bridge if this were that story; they have dinner together almost every night. They are sensitive people—Leonard can be ignorant sometimes, but he doesn’t mean any harm to anyone; Linda was a high-school guidance counselor and knows well enough how to handle the situation. When I arrived, Leonard shook my hand and said into my eyes, “it’s rough.” I know—poor Selina is all alone. When I hugged her goodbye I could feel that she would never hug her husband again, and suddenly she felt very young, very slight in my arms: I could feel the young girl who had once ridden with Don down to the parking lot where the boys were gonna have a rumble and Don wanted to break it up but she was afraid. So many (mis)adventures.
Kathleen is there (my cousin who’s kepeing Xerxes) and her father, Richard. Michael, cousin and wizard, his sister, Karen and florist, and her husband (George) and daughters (Giles and Mills) are there too. Selina receives many visitors and many contacts; someone offered to bring food and asked her when was good; she agonized over telling them that Monday was best for her: “I love giving, but I hate receiving.” Sometimes you have to let people take care of you, but so many people want to come talk about how much they loved Don (as though Selina didn’t know), and she has to sit there and do the work of speaking to them. The least they can do is feed her. Somehow someone’s going to have to take care of the house—she decorates, but Don was the workman. He never told anybody to do anything: he did it and asked you to do it with him; people alawys went along with him in doing.
I was asked to say grace over dinner last night; I used the “in his name we pray for peace” formula, but I didn’t mention the 1st Kings 19 passage: I gave thanks for the things I was grateful for—creation, love, togetherness; I asked that the food be blessed to our nourishment and that we be blessed to God’s work. I could hardly breathe from trying not to cry. It’s amazing how authority is passed down—I am the youngest by ten years, and in no sense a leader. But I was, unanimously, entrusted with this single sacred duty: to speak, in that moment, in the place of the departed (though surely he took his place from a former speaker who took their place from a former…), and so I stood in his big shoes and strong shoulders and spoke the blessing he had given me to say. God, may peace prevail; may creation heal; may love reign in our hearts and hands and mouths. I always loved the prayer from the Sarum Primer:
God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at mine end, and at my departing.
That about sums it up, don’t you think?
Death and passing
I hate euphemisms for death. “He passed,” they’ll say. “Passed”? Where to? Dead. Say it: “dead.” The man’s dead. But it doesn’t feel real: we’re so in the habit of thinking that they’re still here that we elide out the unbearable break of their no longer being. Today I went to the choir rehearsal for the service tomorrow. The choir director, or rather, the “music minister,” prayed: “we know that Don is OK, that he’s with you. We know that he has opened his eyes to what’s on the other side.” We’re so certain that there can’t be death because we can’t imagine it: it’s where we aren’t, and so the only way to imagine what it’s like to be dead is to imagine yourself somehow continuing to be.
I said grace again at dinner tonight: my heart raced and my breath caught; we held hands: if we didn’t, I’d fidget, rub my face. But somehow I knew what to say, just by saying what seemed obvious. I don’t know: it feels dishonest, but it’s easy to string together words that seem as though they mean something. I guess that’s all talking is. “Don’t worry about not knowing how to pray,” Paul said somewhere, the misogynist pig, “because the spirit will intercede with sighs too deep for words.” My cousin Karen cried because I ended with Don’s “bless this food to our nourishment and us to thy use; in his name we pray for peace” formula. Leonard said that I was good at praying, and nobody seemed to mind my doing it. I wasn’t the youngest there today: there were the two little girls, six and four. But I’m the next youngest. I left the buffet bar around which we prayed after “amen” because I had to be alone; I stood in the bathroom and prayed for myself for a minute; I felt as though Don were still alive, as though he’d step around that corner and take a plate of food to his seat. He was left handed, so he sat at the end of the table lest his cutting with the left hand bump his neighbor at dinner. I knew full well he was gone, even then: he was present as gone; insofar as he was gone he was once again present; he had become an ancestor.
In parts of the world, it is the responsibility of a certain member of each generation to carry the names and stories of the family and its ancestors, going back as far as anyone remembers. European Christianity formally condemns the veneration of ancestors, but wasn’t able to eliminate it: we’re still doing it. We gather together at Don’s death to share all the stories of him we know, to get our stories straight for posterity: who was he? how will we remember him? what will we tell about him to the next generation? He had no children (not by his nor Selina’s will but because they weren’t fertile), so he has to be folded back into our generations like leavening. The little girls called him “dit-doo.” My mother (was) asked to speak a small saying at the scattering of Don’s ashes tomorrow; she spoke at her other two siblings’ funerals, too. I worry that she’ll make it all about her: “he’s my guy,” she said. He’s our guy. He’s the world’s guy. I can see how, after two generations, it becomes hagiography.
The third generation will say “he died”—they won’t say “passed”. Why do we mince words? It seems rude, indecorous to say directly what happened. It’s too direct. Better to hint, suggest; though it’s not as though anybody doesn’t know what we mean. Perhaps it’s because we still hope that he’ll come back right away, that it’s some cruel mistake that will be corrected soon by a helpful angel who says, “why do you seek the living among the dead?” The sabbath came and went, and he’s still in the tomb where we left him. We annointed him, burned him, bought the thank you cards for the food and well-wishes. But still, we don’t pray “God be at my death,” but rather “God be at mine end, and at my departing.” I certainly can’t imagine him dead; yet dead, he is already alive again as our ancestor. Alive in our bodies, in our words, in our rituals. Alive, not out there without us in some unimaginable beyond (though maybe he’s there too), but here, with us, in us. So it seems wrong to say, now, “dead”, because he’s still part of our drama; he’s passed offstage where we’re to join him eventually, but for now we still play out the performance without him. He’ll only be dead when nobody alive knew anybody who knew him when he was alive; then he’ll be a remote ancestor, hazy and unknown; but perhaps his manner of praying will live on without attribution, and so having been alive he’ll still be discernible to the one who knows how to see.
Burial ceremonies
Don was buried today. I took my turn pouring his ashes out of the urn into the hole dug in the church’s “memorial garden” for him. We each took our turn pouring a little piece of him into the ground—ashes to ashes, dust to dust, or something to that effect. It was all, in some sense, very campy: I couldn’t capture the sorrow of the occasion. Pain, disjuncture, broken connections, but not necessarily sadness. There was no somberness in our celebration of his life, but nevertheless we cried.
I was invited to sing in the choir, which I may have mentioned. I wore Don’s robe and held his folder. He and Selina had been members of the choir for more than forty years. We sang one of their favorite pieces, “My Eternal King” by Jane Marshal. The choir knew it very well, and I fell in with them. It wasn’t until the piece was over that I cried. The choir felt Don’s absence—his voice wasn’t with them. And I sang well, but not in Don’s voice part: I wore his robe and carried his folder, but I didn’t sing the line he sang. The choir sang with their full voices, and I felt what my voice teachers meant when they told me to sing from my abdomen: my voice was sore because I hadn’t used it at full power for so long. These baptists didn’t have any compunction about singing the quiet parts quiet and the loud parts loud. I sang as loud as I could and they all sang with me, and Don’s voice was still absent. When we sat down after singing the anthem, I cried. Really cried. In his folder, Don had left some tissues that I used to wipe my face and nose; I felt his weird absent presence, or present absence, in that moment; I knew him and knew that he would have offered me those tissues that he had put there for the moment when someone needed them.
I still sleep with the blanket and stuffed bear I got as a newborn. I drag them with me everywhere, including on all of my trips. They make every bed feel like home, even though they’re worn tatters and parts of them are lost (I’ve spoken about this before, but who knows where?). My step-father referred to them as my “toys,” and for many years encouraged me to put them away. For a while, when I was about eleven or twelve, I experimented with putting one away and only sleeping with the other, but it didn’t last: they’re still my most precious and irreplaceable things. I remember falling asleep once at the orthodontist while the glue or something was drying, and I felt them there with me. My mother called this phenomenon “internalization”: we know something so well that, even in its absence, it’s present to us—like a parent’s voice telling us what to do when we’re lost.
I felt that I had internalized Don—that I have an image of him as I knew him first-hand and through others, and that I know what he’d say or do. That trace of him, those tissues in the music folder, were meaningless to anyone else; but for me they were a trace of who he was and what he did. I knew him through this remnant. We spoke of him in the past tense today at dinner after the service—I think we’re beginning to accept that he’s gone. And it’s not so bad, because he wasn’t afraid. The pastor told this anecdote during his homily: “I went to visit Don at the hospital the day before he died and told him, ‘you’re going to see a light; it’s the light that you’ve walked in your whole life, and now it’s time to walk towards it.’ Don said, ‘I’ve already seen it.’” Don wasn’t afraid to die, and so we’re at peace with his dying. Not at peace: he’s missing; but not sorrowful. He’d have wanted us to be joyful remembering him, and we are; he was a man who ran the good race. We miss him dearly, and he’s dead. May we all be remembered so well when it’s our time to go.
