Going home for your father’s funeral can split your personality in two.
Draped in the deepest mourning you ever have felt, your unremittable grief fights with the nostalgic thrill that has brought together every living member of your family for the first time since your mother’s funeral almost 30 years ago.
Our whirlwind 43-hour visit to the memory-hugging community of my boyhood presented a sticky, almost but not quite, dilemma.
The joy of seeing my five sometimes-disagreeing sisters in the same room, actually talking to each other for the first time since the 1980s, was starkly pitted against the shock we all felt at being orphaned. Only technically were we children, though, since our ages range from the earliest 50s to almost 70.
When Pop died two weeks ago tonight, three weeks short of his 94th birthday, merely eight days after he had lost touch with reality, his life officially was stamped fulfilled beyond the most ambitious expectations.
Two hundred mourners came to say farewell to Pop.
A Tribute to My Father
An official told me that was a shockingly large crowd for a man his age, especially since his name only had appeared in the newspaper four times, when he and Mom were married, when Mom died, when he and my stepmother were married, and when he died.
For the days from when Pop died until we flew home, Diane and I agreed that we dreaded what lay ahead knowing that not all of my siblings and other relatives subscribed to the notion of egalitarianism. Some are far more equal than others, some are forgiving, and about 75 percent can overtly tolerate each other.
We drove into my hometown late last Sunday morning in our rented car, which was the first jolting departure from family history. It was the first time since high school days that my flight had landed without a single relative to welcome me. Was I really home?
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A brother and his sisters. Photo by Stu Shear
I called two sisters. One was severely annoyed at the supposed antics of another sister, and the second one I dialed just wanted peace.
For only the second time in my life, I would check into a motel because — another shock — there no longer was a family home. Showering without having yet faced any family member, I was not sure how I felt, anxious, nervous, curious, a peculiar mix at my age.
Since Diane and I had been on the road more than 14 hours, where to eat? A city I thought I knew suddenly looked as empty as a ghost town. Abandoned buildings, vacated streets, few faces, all strangers. Still, dozens of landmarks were chillingly familiar. If only I could celebrate, if only I could put aside why I really had come home.
After a compromised lunch where we read the Sunday newspapers for distraction’s sake, we stopped to pay our respects to my stepmother, who was not home.
Before reporting to a ritual service for Pop, I wanted to buy time by driving past the homes of long-gone relatives, formerly thriving businesses, sweet, sweet memories of yore. Anything to avoid facing all of those people who would say how much they admired and already missed my father. How long could we drive?
I Was Whelmed Over
I must have spoken separately to 180 of the 200 mourners, and they sensitively eased my pain.
In the evening, Diane, my sisters and I shared the same dinner table for the first time since 1981, and enmity was not allowed into the room. From the claustrophobic gloom of the afternoon, we had progressed to authentic, elusive camaraderie.
But where was my garrulous father who never met a conversation he didn’t like, especially with strangers, as so many remarked?
Drained and simultaneously afloat, if not drowning, in strongly conflicted feelings, Diane and I rested for the next day’s main service. We nearly drove the tires off our little car the next day, touring my hometown, memorizing the updates and yearning for the way streets, buildings and especially people used to look.
Tears at the service flowed so lavishly you would have thought someone much younger had died with suddenness.
Afterward, my wife and I and the sister responsible for scoring family peace retreated in the depressing sadness of a late sunny afternoon to the odd near-solitude of my hometown’s favorite mall.
After 30 minutes, my late brother’s best schooldays chum, the very soft-spoken Don, better known as Hoopy, looking lonelier than we felt, sat down at our table. For one more hushed hour, mentally we held each other’s hands.
Later, after stopping by the new library in the search for still another distraction, we drove relentlessly, until dark for final, almost desperate glimpses of the sweetest scenes of my early life. Please, don’t let it end.
Diane provided the perfect coda. As we drove back, heavily, to our generic motel, she inquired, “Is this still home?”
No. How can it be? Everyone now is gone.
