I am bumping, because with luck Sampiro will be back soon and I want him to be posting, not wasting time looking for this thread.
I’m on pins and needles wondering just what all Cousin Luna the Ghost Hunter did at the funeral.
Another bump. Sampiro, please don’t leave us hanging like this!
Miz BeeBee’s House of Polystyrene Style offered to let us provide a music CD to be played during Visitation rather than the canned dirges. Since Visitation was to last only an hour we were asked to keep the music to approximately this length as it would begin playing at the beginning of visitation and would therefore conclude towards the end. All makes perfect sense.
My mother was, to put it mildly, not musical. She was tone deaf and often said, acknowledging the partial plagiarism of Ulysses S. Grant, “I know two tunes; one’s the theme to STAR TREK and the other one isn’t.” As such she didn’t have any favorite CDs or records, just some songs that I knew she liked. With help from the marvelous I-tunes (that site’s gonna be really popular one day, U-mark my words) I compiled a CD that ran a bit over (ending up about 64 minutes or so) of songs and artists that I knew she liked, the one song I’d ever heard her say she wanted played at her funeral (other than “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You”, which I was tempted to add but decided not to) and songs that expressed how I felt, all trying to keep with a theme but not being morbid. For those interested in funerals and mix-tapes and the overlap thereof, here’s the Playlist (though not necessarily in the same order):
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (Josh Groban)
*Softly & Tenderly * (her favorite hymn, the version from the soundtrack of The Apostle [one of her favorite movies])
*Amazing Grace * (Ruben Studdard)
The Things We Said Today (Beatles song, Mary McCaslin version)
Greensleeves (Isaac Stern instrumental, among her favorites, perhaps because it was traditionally said to be the work of sexy fat symbol/fat sex symbol Henry VIII)
*An Eagle When She Flies * (Dolly Parton, my mother’s favorite living singer and the only one she ever went to see in concert in other cities twice)
I’ll Fly Away (a bluegrass instrumental version, my mother’s favorite music, this being the song she said she wanted played)
Lorena (instrumental slow version, a Civil War song that was among her favorites)
*Will The Circle Be Unbroken * (Carter Family, another of her favorites)
*They Live in You * (from The Lion King, a song I’d played for her and told her was for “you and Daddy and all the others, but mostly you” [always assuage the ego] “who will always live in me”)
The Rose (Bette Midler, another of her favorites)
Some of these Days (Sophie Tucker, her favorite “olden” singer)
Two of Us (Beatles song/Aimee Mann version, chosen by me due to the line “You and I have memories/longer than the road that stretches out ahead”)
*The Lord’s Prayer * (Leontyne Price)
*The Color Purple * (from The Color Purple: the Musical, the way I think she felt about God towards the end and a beautiful song whether she did or not)
*Hard Candy Christmas * (Ms. Parton, from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, more for my own sentiments)
Pachelbel’s Canon in D
War Eagle (the Auburn Fight Song)
A second CD was made for the songs in the service and was to be played by one of the funeral planners at the appropriate times. The speaker would nod to her if necessary to give the cue.
I arrived at the funeral home just before visitation began. Apparently the preceding funeral had released early due to lack of interest or brief speakers but whatever the case, by the time I arrived and before visitation had actually begun, the CD was already on Two of Us. The numbskulls had started it about 45 minutes early which meant that after 15 minutes the canned music began! Eh, c’est la Mort.
Another memory from the visitation: A very elderly black lady with eyes streaming tears to the point that the parts which are not yellow are red grabs me in a bear hug you’d think her too small and feeble and elderly to be capable of and calls me by name bawling the entire time.
“Oh Jon baby… my baby… you were her baby… I know she worshipped the ground you walked on… I just can’t believe she’s gone, I can’t believe it… oh Lord, I just can’t believe it…”
I appreciate the sentiment but flashbacks to “Weepin’ Wanda”, the character played by Shakespearean actress/dancer/marijuana advocate Helen Martin (bk4 227, Bulworth, etc.) from the famous, memetic and ultimately mytholigical “Damn! Damn! Damn!” episode of Good Times.
“Thank you so much…” I say, not knowing what else to say. “You know she was… really fond of…”
I can’t think of anything more to say because I’ve no idea who this woman is and thus no idea what my mother could believably be fond of, but she completes it for me.
“…my mashed potatoes” says Weepin’ Wanda. “Oh Lord, I wish I’d made her some more of them and I’ll never have the chance now. And my chicken and dressing… she just loved my chicken and dressing…”
“?!” I think. I’ve even less idea… oh… OH!
“Yes Miss Mable, she surely was… she surely was…”
Miss Mable is my brother’s octogenarian housekeeper and cook. My mother met her once, but whenever she’d send food north through my brother my mother would send a thank you note and some little trinket (a necklace, a pint of my mother’s camp stew [best on Earth], a piece of geode) back to her. Apparently the thought either meant a lot to Miss Mable or else funerals are her hobby and Andalusia’s running out of dead folks. I really did appreciate her coming and her sentiments but… perspective, my dear, perspective! It’s gauche to outmourn your boss and his family at their matriarch’s funeral.
The beginning is announced and the Lesbians and the Ladybirds depart as all save family were asked to be seated. Lou Ida and the Graea are visibly pissed when told “family only” by the staff and not one member of the family contradicts them (and in fact had they put up a resistance we would have blocked them but luckily they’re cowardly). I instinctively begin to wonder where my spirit gum and foundation are as the curtain’s about to be drawn but then I remember, I’m dressed already. (This isn’t the nightmare I frequently have about having to go onstage in King Lear, Phantom of the Opera or Major Barbara [it’s always one of those three plays, none of which I’ve been in] without knowing my lines or even having rehearsed, it’s just my mother’s funeral, so I’m relieved.)
The Family here with suggested casting choices:
Myself (I bear a resemblance to either Orlando Bloom [we have a nearly identical uvula] or Johnny Depp [strikingly similar gall bladder] unless you’re one of those people who only cares about face and body resemblances, in which case it’s a young [or 40] Peter Ustinov [also a narcoleptic with an African ancestor- interesting- I digress)
My Sister (difficult to cast; okay, think Vivien Leigh as Blanche Dubois though with much longer hair [a one-time mullet that’s been much and blessedly lessened in recent years]; there are lines that are visible from close-up but even then you’re surprised to learn she’s in her late 40s, while from a distance she could pass for 30, but also a certain identifiably neurotic and pissed expression in the eyes)
My Brother-in-Law (John Ritter, though taller and broader)
My Brother (Bill Clinton)
His Wife (Olivia DeHavilland ca. 1955)
Their Daughter (an late teens Sarah Jessica Parker [though naturally blonde])
Luna (Carol Kane, but in a long, thick and mostly gray wig)
Aunt Joey (QE2)
Elisabeth (she’s not a blood relative or even the same race for the most part but she and my mother considered each other sister’s and very much looked the part; I’d currently cast Lena Horne as due to the terrible traffic accident she was in a couple of years ago Elisabeth is much thinner than she’s ever been, her hair is long and white which it never was before [jet black and pinned] and she’s in a wheelchair, but when she was mobile she looked very much like my mother’s half-sister had my mother’s father been a Creole planter with a white wife and a mulatto mistress and a daughter the same age by each)
Elisabeth’s son Junior (Bernie Mac- he doesn’t look much like his mother)
Mandy- (Sandra Bullock), surprisingly attractive wife to Luna’s son, my obsessive toy collector Trekkie cousin the Virgin Nigel.
Missing are Nigel (think a young Bob Denver, but chubbier) and his brother Shea (at 21 Shea very much resembled Leonardo DiCaprio except cuter; at 32 and after more than a decade of heavy drinking and heavier pot smoking and a wide array of psychotropics and self-pitying and broken marriages he looks more like a less hygienic variant of Grizzly Adams) are, due to the shortage of men in the family, serving as pall bearers as are their uncle Jim (a very dissipated and often divorced yet highly responsible and currently sober 54 year old played by Mickey Roarke) and my nephew Garland (played by Aaron Carter or one of his brothers, not sure which).
When the doors are closed Gary (Oliver Hardy) leads us all in prayer.
"Lord, just look down from your throne above and just be with us today so we can just get through today and just remember what aiodj aoidu af just aijd afdioaf ao just aojidaodjf a a fad f occidental aodijuafsiodjf a shapeshifter ioaud afioua afa just audiua fp o Branson Missoura where Yakov Sn ajdiaf ia u aiudiof
I peek up from the prayer to see Luna looking at me with a mixture of disgust and amusement. My niece, whose “freethinker” ways dismay her mother, is also looking up with an “oh you gotta be kidding…” expression. I do what any good son would do when his mother’s pre-funeral prayer is being said and effect my most spastic facial expression while shoving as much spittle as I can through my lips without dripping it, sucking it in instantly when I hear
“…ad aidf adfj just aiuf oaiu adnd lesbian Ladybird cousin iajd iafoju difu io a, Amen. Just”
Whereupon I try to begin the wave move with my cousin Mandy but she won’t play, though she is at least semi-amused. We enter the family sanctuary and Gary takes the pulpit. It’s showtime.
“We are gathered here today to pay our final respects and celebrate the life of Blanche Sampiro. Let us pray. Heavenly father, just ajjdo adifj aoij dfja dfoaijd fadf adff aasknd askdnf ad fonoa oa ianr oa just aoijdoai djf cinnamon toasty Apple Jacks adjaoj oaijoj foijoi ad f a zooma zoom do jdof iopoijiohcl fajd fa akajf a darktown strutters ball aijdif aj just ajdofja df just aoidjfioajdf allafl fleece lined aklfjaod another peanut butter sam’ich dfj aii just oajdf btjaerj named Shirley DeVore who took a trip djfaji joijhoija dfalkdnf aodkfj adl adkfn ao fa just aldjfoa ijd fa just jafljadf a ijiofja dfjn jayson blair aiodu fioajd faiojdifj oiajoidjf just aljdfa odjf just ifoiaf ujc auihv a your Holy Name, Amen.”
He pauses and nods to the funeral director, who nods back. Not sure what to do he nods again. The funeral director nods back. Once again the word “dead air” comes to mind and it’s not just because Mama’s not in the Elysium Shrink Wrap. The funeral director is either new to the job or just simply or had a late night breathing the fumes from embalming a Rastafarian with glaucoma or whatever but she doesn’t quite get the clue that “now would be a good time to press PLAY, a real good time in fact…” so Gary just clears his throat, puts his hands into his quadruple synthetic blend pockets, gives a short stupid smile to the congregation and nods at no one in particular. Finally he decides to go on, supposedly with the introduction, and he opens his mouth to speak and out comes a blaring instrumental version of How Great Thou Art as the funeral director pushes the button, perhaps because she remembered or perhaps she was doing anything to stop the monotone.
The song lasts for a couple of minutes after which Gary returns to the podium to introduce my brother.
“I knew Mrs. Sampiro for… ten years or more I’d guess. Yeah, about. She was a teacher one time you know. She also worked for the… for some ten years or more… worked for the Montgomery County Mental Health Corporation, you might say.” He nods with purpose to drive home this theory. And, you might say, he’s right, since MCMHC was indeed her employer and she was paid by them in return for work she did so, you might say, she did indeed work for them. Of course this is rather longer than he really needs to introduce my brother, who planned to go through all this in his eulogy, and this may explain why he’s spent the entire day writing on a steno pad the notes for what he has to understand is his opening prayer and introduction.
“She had three children. I know them all, but I specially know her daughter. We live close to each other and we’ve been good friends for about ten years or more.” Ten years or more evidently is to Gary what “about a hundred dollars is to Rainman- an elastic unit of time suitable for anything between more than a few months and less than a century, as so far it’s not really been accurate for anything. At least he’s mentioned my sister now and how he fits in and so it’s time to introduce my brother.
“Brothers and sisters… what is death? Is it the end? Or is there hope… for a new awakening? New life?” The nods in no way help answer the question “is this a rhetorical question or is he really asking?”, but when no answer comes the nods stop and he continues. “You know… death, it idn’t anymore than goin’ to sleep… nothin’ more than takin’ a nap before you wake up and you’re in a new body and nothin’s wrong with you and you’re happy for all eternity…”
Gary has clearly never seen a bill from Mr. Durning or Miz BeeBee, for you could furnish your house in floor to floor posture-pedics for what they charge to tuck you into this “sleep”, but that’s all beside the point. The point is written on my sister’s face and it’s this:
THE GODDAMNED MONGOLOID HAS DEFIED DIRECT ORDERS AND GONE OFF BOOK! This is beginning to sound more like a sermon than an introduction. Especially when five minutes later it’s still going on.
After speculating on when God will sound the wake up alarm and some seemingly random Bible verses that prove conclusively he can read aloud (though surprisingly his lips move less than when he reads to himself) comes the show and tell. The next part is one I particularly wish I could show and somehow after the estate is probated I will, for it’s visual. And memorable.
“Now, I want y’all all to hear somethin’…” Oh please God just tell me he’s not gonna fart… “It’s my favorite verse probley in the whole Bible…” Hallelujah.
“That verse is…” he looks around, silently nodding “anyone? Bueller? Bueller?” in Morse code, “that verse… is in the Twenty Third Psalm. Read it with me.”
That would be easier perhaps if people had brought their Bibles.
“The Lord… the Lord is my shepherd… I shall not… that’s I shall NOT… want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” He nods the profundity of this into us all. I suppose I understand why it’s his favorite verse, though growing up [I now know] narcoleptic in the woods I lay down in green pastures more than once and just don’t see what’s so great about it, let alone being made to
“He leadeth me beside the still waters. He… He… that’s God…” (not Lorne Greene as that verse is so often interpreted to mean) “He!” (Gary points upward for instance to show he means the God who’s above the ceiling “leadeth ME… it was King David who wrote it, but the beauty, you see… the beauty of that passage… is that ME can mean anyone who reads it, cause he’s talking to YOU! HE leadeth ME in the paths of righteousness for His namesake.”
So this one is his favorite evidently. Or was it the last one?
“Yea… yea though I walk…”
Oh crap, neither was his favorite. He’s going to read the entire damned psalm. I’ll bet $3.50 that he’ll get all the way to the end and remember that the verse he meant was John 3:16 so he’ll start with “In the beginning was the word” at John 1: 1 and work his way up. Already two members of the congregation are confessing that they let Chemical Ali use their beach house and he’s not even to the verse yet.
“Yea though I” he points to himself to indicate that King David was not referring to HIS optical organ “Yea though I walk… through the valley… of the shadow of death… I will fear no evil… did you get that? I. WILL. FEAR. NO. EVIL. IN. THE. SHADDA. OF. DEATH! Cause the Lord is with ME. That’s ME. And that’s… YOU.” He nods the plain sense of this into our psyches. How in hell did King David know our names? And yet there it is. I think…
“Now that… is my fav’rite verse… in the whole Bible. And I’m gonna show ya why.”
Did he just say “show”? As in “show and tell but not the tell part” show? How’s he gonna…
Gary steps out from behind the pulpit.
“Now I want y’all to use your imaginations.”
I am. I’m imagining I’m a little Greek speaking mouse and I’ve just jumped into a swimming pool that’s filled not with water but with packing peanuts, and in the middle of it is a submarine that’s shaped like a View Master and its
“I want you to imagine this.”
Good. That was getting weird and taking too much time.
“You’re walking… in a desert. Remember now, that Israel… it’s a desert.”
Except for the parts that are fertile and green he’s absolutely right.
“So you’re walkin’ in this desert, see, and you’re standing there.” He raises a hand to what I can guarantee you he would never recognize as a 45 degree angle, light refracting into six colors as it reflects off the synthetics of his coat jacket under which skin dangles like Jell-O held by Blanket Jackson in Germany where it’s been loosened or emptied from the recent gastric surgery. “Now, back over here” (he indicates to the left, which incidentally is also the south, where the sun isn’t usually) “is the Sun. Now… here’s what I want you to imagine too… if you’d look down on the ground and it’s before you if you face it or back of you if you turn… that… if you think about it… is your shadow.” His arm drops to his waistless side as he lets us ponder this. It’s all so much though that it’s hard to quite grasp.
Does he mean that when the sun is to HIS back, that’s MY shadow? But only if I think about it… I think that’s the key… now if I don’t think about it then it’s Gary’s shadow but if I do… and the sun is in the south… then…
I’m almost about to have an insight when unfortunately like the soldier and Archimedes’s circles he disturbs my insight with another mindblower…
“And wherever you go, in that desert… you’re shadow’s always… ALWAYS… gone be there. That’s where a shadow comes from. The sun. And you.”
But I’m here… so if YOU’RE in the desert with MY shadow and the… what if it’s night… oh my gods but my brains hurt! But then… the epiphany… the EVREKA that’s not just because I’m running down a street in Syracuse naked this time… I understand! CAPTAIN KELLER, SHE KNOWS! W-A-T-E-R, that spells SHADOW! What? Helen says this water blows G-O-A-T-S and she wants a DASANI! THAT’S WHAT A SHADOW IS! I KNOW HOW TO MAKE A SHADOW!
All my life I thought a shadow was just something people in Bible times had. Peter Pan had one briefly but God got mad and told his friends’ mama to take it and I totally understand it, but I have one myself! It’s in Israel, but I have one, or maybe Gary has it and it’s mine… or I have it but it really belongs to Gary… or the… wait, I almost had it but now I’m losing it… okay, imagine I’m standing in a desert and I’m Gary and there’s a shadow on my right but a sun is… okay, I lost it again…
“That is a shadow. And you know what the Lord just told you? He said, if you believe in Christ, if you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, you will not have to be afraid of the shadow, cause not even the SHADOW of death is gonna hurt you!”
I’ve never really been afraid of the shadow of death half as much as a tenth as much as Death itself. Death is usually portrayed as a really skinny fellow so how much of a shadow could he realistically have? Death himself, however, has a sickle… if you ever have a choice between a sickle and a shadow in a fight, I’d go for the sickle cause the curved and sharpened metal is going to be more likely to do damage. You might say. If you think about it.
“The valley of the shadow of death is one place you will not fear evil, for the Lord Jesus Christ is here with you, and He will not let you be afraid so long as you accept him as your Savior.”
The Lord Jesus Christ, making his Old Testament debut (though as a shadow figure), has now delivered us from evil so long as we accept him like King David says and make a shadow in Israel. Finally the Bible makes sense.
“Mrs. Sampiro is dead. But because I know for a fact she accepted Jesus she is not. She’s in heaven now, awaiting the Final Judgment, and when we die we’ll be reunited with her. And that’s exactly what this psalm is saying.”
Oh shit. While I was thinking about shadows and how to make them (thank God he demonstrated as I’d never have gotten it) he went and read another Psalm evidently.
“Now let us pray again. Dear Lord lend us your comfort jajdkf akj oaijdfioja ioa and we’ll return it when we’re done aidjaio djaioj fiojadoifj oihgoiajhd ifjadokjf aokjoijihzhicl adfla a dfn al flea bath ajudoijfioauoiu a savi just kdjfioajd foadn g Avon bath toys iaudofiau fion zllknwo ae a klezmer aiodjfioaj di fnadfn a I want my daddy’s records said Bubba ajdofa joijd foiajdfo just aj dkfjadoijf ad fjust kajidojf oij ao just aljdfoajd foiajd f a jioj way better than Louise or Irlene either one oaijdoifajo ujohoghoz a tape measure iajdoifja dlfjaodj fjus just akdjfoaidjf aoidj fa as fa make a shadow for Jesus aioduaoidj faoidj faoidjfiojjkj ta ddfa and just do that in the name of your son, Amen.”
And with that he returns to his seat on the podium.
Without introducing my brother.
So my brother starts to rise to go to the stage but isn’t quite out of the family gallery when the hymn Be Thou My Vision erupts on the slightly less loud than before sound system for the funeral director has now come to associate silence with need-for-not-silence and hit the PLAY. (Captain Keller… she knows too! She kn… Oh fuck it, pass me some more peas.)
My niece Rebecca is 17 and recently returned from a semester at Harvard (she took 3 classes there between her junior and senior year on some type of prestigious high school program for college credit thingy exclusively for the gifted children of well off social climbers). She’s definitely bright, though somewhat sheltered, and though I’m biased and out of touch with the general aesthete I think she’s quite attractive. She’s most definitely a spoiled princess (i.e. she used her father’s credit card to buy approximately $200 worth of floral arrangements each month for her dorm room while in Cambridge, which he thought was a great idea). To my knowledge she doesn’t have a boyfriend.
As the hymn played I leaned over and whispered in her ear “You know… Gary’s single… and he lives less than an hour from ya. And I know for a fact he’s got another tie. Just sayin’…”. My niece’s chin begins to tremble and her hand comes up to her mouth and after a couple of seconds her head bows as her face trembles even more. My aunt Joey is sitting directly behind Rebecca and though she’s legally blind she’s also the reason I can never truly say “I am my own worst critic”; she’s probably been watching me with whatever remains to make sure I don’t do something evil. Seeing her chance to undo my spells she reaches up, pats my nieces back with her bony jeweled* manicured talon and whispers loudly “It’s alright sugar… it’s alright… there’s a lot less things than death…” to which my niece, to her own major embarrassment, loudly cackles. If the congregation heard then at least it might have sounded like grieving.
*One of Aunt Joey’s rings has a diamond that belonged to Hetty Green Hetty Green - Wikipedia (the stone, not the setting- Hetty kept it with similar stones in a pill box at her bank). Another was purchased from the estate of Gypsy Rose Lee. I mention this for no real reason.
I have a strange relationship with Aunt Joey. She’s a harridan in many ways who never missed a chance to belittle or criticize me to anybody who would give a reasonable facsimile of listening while at the same time she virtually sucks up to my brother and says “I’ve always felt he should have been mine and my daughter should have been Blanche’s”. She also says “Jon’s by far my favorite nephew.” Weird. Maybe I’ll be in her will.
The only thing I’ve specifically asked her to leave me are the miniature portraits taken from life of James III (the Old Pretender), his Polish wife Clementine, and their youngest son, a young adult Henry (brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie [whom he detested]). BPC isn’t among them so perhaps it sold separately.
Henry Stewart was named by the Vatican as the cardinal of York, a province he was forbidden to enter, and after his brother’s death as King Henry IX of a country he never saw at a distance. He held a court in exile in France as King Henry IX, Cardinal Duke of York, losing everything in the French Revolution and saved from poverty after the French Revolution only by the charity of the crown to which he never renounced his claim (his very distant cousin George III granted him a pension, mainly because he was childless and it was good P.R.), dying in Italy where he was actually a fairly important churchman though not even the church really took his English claims that seriously. I’ve just always liked the symbolism of his strange pretentious life.
Unfortunately I’m guessing either Nigel will inherit the damned things and sell them to buy four custom made Sarek action figures with a box autographed by Mark Lenard, or his brother will inherit them and trade them even for some “particularly righteous Jamaican Wow weed”. Still, I’ll always have York (at least as much as poor Henry did).
A quarter century ago I went on a trip to south Florida with Aunt Joey and her grandsons. They fought the entire time and so she separated them, putting one on each side of me in the backseat of the Datsun my mother drove at the time. Periodically when the fighting would resume she’d turn around and, going through a rare “spare not the rod” phase, she’d whip at them with a switch. She was in her late 50s and with good vision then but either her aim was off or she just really didn’t like me. I don’t think Nigel or Shea ever felt a single lick but I had whelps for a week and still have a small scar on my forearm.
The point is: Family Eulogies next.
So, in the Gospel According To Gary, Jesus is the shadow? Interesting…
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Jesus knows!”
There has just got to be money to be made off of this!
“Jesus is the Rock!” Jesus is the Light! Jeeeeesus is THE SHADOW!
I just don’t know how the family eulogies will top that. I am on pins and needles here.
This is all going to be on the DVD, right? And you’re going to make copies available to all of us? I’m not trying to make light of your mother’s funeral, but sometimes laughing at death is a healthy thing to do, or at least laughing at the ceremonies that surround death. And Gary the preacher is definitely worth laughing at!
And have I told you lately how I worship at your feet for what you whispered in your niece’s ear?
Um…I am related to a Gary (not blood kin, I hasten to add), and talking to him is as exciting as watching paint dry.
Perhaps it’s the name? 
He is speaking in tongues with the aifudjods or his mumbling while chewing his tongue?
What is it about solemn religous ceremonies that make them hilarious?
Awaiting the next installment…just me and my shadow.
“Finally, the Bible makes sense.” AWESOME.
Psst… I think you mean welts, though whelps make for a much more entertaining visual.
Oh I’m not saying it didn’t hurt, but they were so cute. Unfortunately I just couldn’t nurse them because I was barely 14.
(I fear eye have sum think of a slight problem with homophones.)
Given the circumstances, I feel a little guilty getting so much enjoyment out of these stories. I’m sorry for your loss, Sampiro, but I’m glad you have this outlet.
Was the version of “How Great Thou Art” the really overwrought one with the sound effects of crashing waves and the fake chimes? That one caused a wave of giggles at my Aunt Hattie’s funeral some years ago.
Some words about my brother Middlechild: I couldn’t stand him for most of my life but we’ve made peace of sorts in recent years. I hugged him, or rather he hugged me, when my father died and again when my mother died and that concludes the physical affection. Our relationship is generally one of warm indifference. Now that my mother’s dead I doubt I’ll enter his house again more than once a year while I remain in Alabama and he’s never entered one of my homes, not because he’s not welcome but because we’re just not close.
He’s extremely intelligent, a textbook overachiever (high school jock, valedictorian, college with high honors) and I won’t say anything to mitigate that. He’s a hell of a lot more disciplined than I am. He also had the fortune of good birth ordinance in that he came of ages/started college/left home when the family still had money and so he never had to endure the years of deprivation or the crazy aunts peeing in the road and on the carpet that the last few years of my life in Weokahatchee was decorated with and there was some resentment over this and various sins of omission and commission on both sides, but essentially he’s my brother and he’s the one this generation who has kids and in the interest of potential future kidney needs all around we have a civil relationship, not having had a fight (note I did not say argument) since 2000 and rarely speaking but when we do it’s… well, formal and with long silences but inoffensive.
I won’t say that my brother was my mother’s least favorite child but he was definitely and measurably and objectively the one she interacted with the least. It was a two-sided embargo- both were very much sinning and sinned against in the relationship; my brother is like my father in that he can and does make the most cutting comments and “observations” with absolutely no concept of why anybody would be offended. (My father for the life of him honestly never understood why I took offense at being told “If I had it to do over again I’d have stopped at two children, after the first if it had been a boy… three’s just too damned many” for after all, he was only giving advice; my brother cannot for the life of him understand why telling my mother, who came to Montgomery indigent and was damned proud of the house she owned and the money she had in the bank, that “well I wouldn’t even bother with a lawyer if I were you, it’s not like you have anything of note to leave anybody” offended her.)
On the other hand my mother, even when what most people would consider cause to be reasonably offended, never quite grasped the concept of “due force” and forgiveness was something that you’d have time for when you died. Her logic was always ‘Why use your hand to swat a fly when that shovel is twice as big and the .38 will finish the job’, so her response to a comment such as the above would be a diatribe that began with “PERHAPS I’D HAVE HAD MORE IF I’D SPENT THE MONEY I INHERITED FROM MY FATHER AND YOUR FATHER ON INVESTMENTS INSTEAD OF USING ALMOST EVERY PENNY OF IT TO EDUCATE THE SORRIEST THING THAT EVER FELL OUT OF ANY ORIFICE ON MY BODY AND THAT INCLUDES DIARRHEA SO HE COULD GO AND PLAY MR. SMALL TOWN BIGFISH AND ACT LIKE HE’S MORE THAN JUST WHITETRASH WITH EDUCATION AND MONEY AND LORD IT OVER IAOIDJFAIOJDAIOJDFAIODJF” etc., and usually ended with my brother’s tires leaving marks in the driveway. If she learned that my brother had spent the night in town without calling her or been to see a play at the Shakespeare Festival (a quarter mile from her house) without dropping by, something a reasonable person would be lightly offended at, why say ‘I find that offensive’ when you can say ‘you never did give a good goddamn about anybody but yourself and your money and I’m surprised your wife has stayed with you all these years’ and then she’d get personal. (Oh no suh, love her though I did and I did very much, miss her though I do and I do very much, I’ll never deny the woman had an over the top Virago Byotch from Hell feasting under the surface like a pitbull in the basement.)
Not that Middlechild can’t deliver the goods himself. He has the worst temper of any of her children, my mother’s temper basically but untempered with my mother’s virtues. When we were kids and my father discussed selling the house it was Middlechild who expressed his objection by driving his fist repeatedly through the drywall of his bedroom.
It was Middlechild who, when he discovered an employee, the dimwitted jock son of a friend whom he had hired as a favor to the kids parents, was revealing to his dimwitted jock buddies about who in town was on what medication [especially teachers on Viagra, girls on birth control, etc.], not only a “bad thing to do” from the standpoint of “it could be embarrassing” but illegal and potential ground for a major lawsuit in a state where one does not wish to be sued, addressed the employee about the error of his ways in a memorable manner. With his wife and other witnesses, one of them a cop, he addressed the employee about his wrongdoing and appeared to listen very politely, even grinning and nodding as the pretty much unrepentant guy babbled on about how he hadn’t intended any harm and the only people he’d told were other high school students and really he didn’t see what harm it did and ‘WHAM!’
The employee’s concentration was shattered a bit when he noticed that his boss had just taken off his $500 watch and thrown it with enough force that it embedded itself in the drywall behind the employee’s head. Though I doubt he’s ever seen PULP FICTION, Middlechild’s follow-up to the stunned 18 year old was “Sorry, for interrupting. My rebuttal is as follows…”
The employee signed papers taking full admitting to and taking full responsibility for the act, resigned, his parents agreed to pay for a portion of the legal fees Middlechild encurred in doing “damage control”, etc… Middlechild was probably convinced the cop was there to intimidate but may have been less cocky had he known he was there to make sure Middlechild did not get out of control.
But my mother, in addition to that temper rarely encountered north of Hell, also had an innate maternal quality and an overdeveloped sense of compassion and empathy and duty to others. She had a more than healthy respect for money but not because of status- it’s because, unlike her older two children, she had lived without it and knew that the biggest distinctions between haves and have nots isn’t what they have or don’t but how they’re treated, and she wasn’t going to be treated that way again. On the other hand she honestly considered money the least important thing she had in other ways- she’d have gladly given me her last sawbuck if I really needed it, she loaned money to her co-worker Camra (a woman whose morals and tastes in men she didn’t think much of though she loved Camra herself like another daughter and Camra even called her “Mama” [and add to this the fact that Camra is black and my mother had less than 21st century liberal views on race]) knowing she would never get it back and co-signed a loan for a friend with bad credit who she [rightly] trusted would be good for it because she couldn’t stand the thoughts of those she liked going through what she went through. Middlechild is not like that- he’s not as fiery or psycho in his angers over petty things, but he’s also one of the least compassionate, least empathic people you’ll ever meet. Money’s not a practical and necessary means to an end to him but a tool; you’ll know within an hour of meeting him how much money he cleared last year, that his houses are paid for, that he considers anybody with less than six months salary saved to be “just plain stupid” and thinks the same of people who major in non lucrative fields. His kids got new SUVs on their 16th birthdays and while he bitches about their spending he doesn’t revoke their unlimited charge accounts and he sees future medical/legal degrees from Harvard or Brown not half as much as an assurance his kids will be well provided for or productive citizens as much as he views them and the yachts and friendships with Kennedys and Rockefellers he wants them to have the way stage mothers see in Broadway marquees for theirs.)
But I digress.
And I digress further. A good thing about Middlechild is that while he has my mother’s temper he lacks her gift for emotional manipulation that went with it (perhaps because manipulation could be argued to be the militarization of empathy and compassion and those are not his strong points). No matter how often or how histrionically my mother threatened suicide or gave a soliloquy that would find you sharper than a serpent’s tooth and accuse you of never having loved her, and only my siblings can really appreciate this, you always believed her. It defied all logic for three intelligent and insightful humans to fall for it every time like Charlie Brown going for that football cause this time she’s really gonna hold it, but we did. And while my mother could be the most irrational and manipulative of humans in her anger, her anger was very rare, and in the other times her virtues and caring and warmth more than atoned for the rare angers. Were character a quantifiable commodity then even with her huge rage and insecurities and imbalance born debt load once her assets were figured in my mother would have emerged way in the black and in the top quartile of people. I’m not so sure my brother would, for while his debt is much less so are his assets.
Sorry, went meandering a bit, but the point is that my brother, who had in many ways the least relationship with my mother, gave the family eulogy. And almost disappointingly he did a good job. Were it not for the fact that half the eulogy was self-centered and a quarter more whitewashed bullshit and my sister and I were reduced to endnotes. And an unusual turn of phrase that had me and my cousin looking at each other with a “I don’t think he meant that quite like it sounds”, but for that, next post, and then Luna Speaks.
FriarTed, allow me to congratulate you on your singularly apt and well chosen thread title.
As I said, he gave a far better eulogy than I anticipated. Excellent even, or at least so I’d have thought were I not as familiar with all involved, and moving for a guy who had to have been irked by the number of people who had greeted him at the visitation with the unintentionally offensive “I didn’t know Blanche had another son!”
He gives her stats: Blanche was the daughter of Ennis and Sophronia, at 15 became engaged to and at 16 married her high school English teacher, had a lengthy career as a teacher and a lengthy second career as a mental health provider, etc. etc… Then there’s the self indulgent parts about his own importance in her life and by the way her son Jon over there cried with her because their relationship was based on grief (news to me) and my sister was of course the only girl (that’s true, I’ve counted). There’s some humor:
“Some of you know that my mother had a temper. Some of you have seen that temper. Some of you have been on the receiving end of that temper.”
I hear some chuckles from the congregation and a couple of “Yes Lawd’s” and the shrill nutsoaffective voice of Lou Ida responding “Yes indeed I have… oh yes”, reminding me of the time that Lou Ida became the next to the last person ever put into a half Nelson by my mother (a hold she perfected as a wrestler, the short career not mentioned- and Lou Ida was just lucky Mama didn’t opt for the flying leg scissors as the old bitch flatly had it coming) and the only person every physically evicted from my mother’s house.
“But I’ll tell you now, my mother’s temper was the thing I’m proudest of… for I consider it her greatest attribute.” Mileage varies. I consider it her worst design flaw.
Unlike Gary’s randomly strewn Bible verses (Gary’s still on the dais, incidentally) and shadow demonstration Middlechild’s Bible readings are relevant and tied in to my mother. He reads Matthew 25: 34-40, with emphasis on the final line:
“You may know my mother was a schoolteacher. You may not know that at the height of integration, which my parents had always supported, when people were scared to cross color lines my mother requested a position in an all black school because she wanted to aid in the peaceful transition to an integrated school system.”
This is technically true, but I have to say there is significant spin added. My parents, intelligent people more progressive than many in their racial views but still very much products of Depression Era Alabama, did not so much support integration as they could read the handwriting on the wall and knew it was going to happen. They felt that Alabama had the opportunity to be a model for peaceful progression. They also knew that in being a model they could probably bargain for a lot more in federal aide to improve their education system as Alabama schools were and are notoriously under funded due to the widespread poverty and ridiculously low property taxes.
My father in his bid for Superintendent of Education (an election lost half on integration and half on my Grandmother’s speeches about her teeth [a whole other story]) tried to explain this at debates. “It’s going to happen- the Feds will always win in these matters, history teaches that plainly- the Civil War and all other conflicts twix state and Federal will, believe me, never be fair battles- they will win, so let us win the treaty.” His opponent countered with the equally logical and compelling “Garland Sampiro is a big ol’ n*gger lover who wants your daughters to marry colored boys and all your taxes to go in welfare and relief to sorry negroes!” (never mind that then as now more white Alabamians were on relief than blacks) and of course won.
The new superintendent, long an enemy of my father before the race, claimed in a public memo that my father was “too intellectual” for the kids in the school where he was teaching (a snark of course) but as he seemed to be mighty impressed with “the superior intellect of the Negro” would probably fit in perfectly as a teacher at the all black school.
My mother requested her transfer not so much for political reasons as to accompany my father, Herodias following Antipas into Gaul, only with less inbred Edomite blood and fewer jewels and eunuchs following. The odd part: they both ranked the job as among the most rewarding they ever had. While there they did assist with peaceful transition, and in the second year they were there the black school had a higher percentage of seniors entering college than the white school. Many of the students openly credited my parents with their decision to go to college. One of them, a retired optometrist, was at the funeral.
A few years later my father became a “big whig” with the State Department of Education. I don’t know if it should be with pride or embarassment that I say he used his position to settle some old scores, including an investigation that led to the firing of the superintendent (now a principal) a year or two before his pension would have been fully vested. But regardless of the ethos, that he did.
Middlechild’s eulogy: “She took this job even though it made her a laughing stock in a very racist town, because of this verse. What you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me.”
Oh, how nice. You just said that the black people who constitute a good third to half of the congregation are the least here.
“She later found her true calling when she went to work with the mentally ill, and she was phenomenal. And she loved working with the mentally ill, for what you do to the least of her brothers, you did to her.”
And then there’s the insanity contingent at the funeral. A full quarter of the congregation is diagnosed mentally retarded and or mentally ill as the current and past residents of the homes my mother managed turned out in droves (drove here meaning “state supplied van”). So that quarter is also the least, though they’re not quite as irked as they’re mainly waiting for my brother to speak so they can get the popcorn, smoke a cigarette and then watch the double feature of Kramer v. Kramer and Cannonball Run 2.
Almost all of the mentally ill and mentally retarded (and overlap thereof) loved my mother, incidentally. One came to the funeral and was so thrilled to see my mother that she screamed “HEY BLANCHE! I LOVE YOU HONEY!” and threw her arms around her with a “what happened to put you in the wheelchair?”, not realizing 1)exactly what type of service was going on today or 2) the lady she was throwing her arms around was my mother’s “Creole half-sister” Elisabeth, who answered “Gerta, you kno… I’m fine baby, how are you?”
Middlechild closes by reading John 21: 15-18:
“If you love my mother" he finishes, "feed her sheep.” Good suggestion. Had he not evicted a woman from a rental property the week before it might have been more convincing, but the congregation liked it and it was an appropriate comment. (He didn’t say after all that he meant to follow the advice.)
As he passed the funeral director he gave her a “don’t hit play” nod, motion and mouthing as the music selections were now off by one. Therefore there was no break between his eulogy and the next one, so he passed his Risen Cousin as he took his seat and Luna took the stand.
Soon people were no longer thinking of sheep. Three months later they’re probably still having nightmares about kittens.
I can’t be the only Doper manically hitting reload on this page waiting for the next installment, right?
I swear this thread is the only reason I stayed awake today. I’m so glad you’re back, Sampiro.
Luna stands behind the altar.
Because I want to comment on a couple of things but I also want it to be fluid as it was in actuality I won’t interrupt her eulogy other than to give [stage directions] and endnotes (1) that will be delineated in the next post.
LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, MISS LUNA GILMER BOWS BURTON LATHAM JENKS HOLCOMB SAYS GOODBYE…
Let me start by telling you, I… well actually I guess I should start by introducing myself since most of you don’t know who in the hell I am, I’m Luna. I’m Blanche’s niece, her sister’s daughter. And I’ll tell you now I don’t have any…* [sigh]… * Bible verses, there’s not gonna be a prayer… probably no uplifting final thought… I don’t even have any notes. I didn’t prepare anything because I wanted whatever I said up here to be spontaneous and natural, like Blanche herself. And I don’t associate Blanche with the Bible or anything like that. Blanche was Blanche.
And for my whole life, there has always been a Blanche. She’s like the North Star or the seas… I took comfort from her and she was always… well it’s like Jon said the other day, there should have been an earthquake when she died…
I don’t remember the first time I realized how much I loved Blanche. I just always did. But if I had to choose one time when I knew how special this woman was… it was on a Sunday and I was in my Sunday School dress. And I must have been maybe three or four. And I was at my grandparents house. And I just thought my grandfather Mustang was the neatest person on Earth.
Well, his cat had gotten bred and she had just had this huge litter of kittens, like ten of them or something, and they were getting into everything and peeing on everything and they were all over his tools and I was sitting down making mudpies still in my dress and Mama was having a cow about that and I was playing with the cats and Mustang said ‘Damn at all these cats! I wish somebody would take these things off or kill ‘em I don’t care which!’
So I picked up a brick that was next to me and I went” * [tomahawk motion]* “WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! And I bashed in the nearest kitten’s head til the little fucker was dead and his brains and his blood were all over me and everything else and I thought I’d done good so I smiled! I was so proud of myself cause I just thought Mustang was…
Well Mustang comes running over screaming ‘What the fuck did you just do Luna! Oh good God Almighty this kid’s a monster!” and my grandmother is screaming bloody murder…which I guess is really pretty appropriate- and my Mama’s just aghast and about to faint like she is right now that I’m telling this story probably- [looks over at family] yep she is- and she’s screaming and crying and telling me my daddy’s gonna give me the beating of my life when he gets back and I don’t know what the shit I’ve done wrong, but I start crying cause everybody’s mad at me and my pretty dress is all covered in kitten brains and kitten blood. And somewhere along the line it occurred, I just killed a fucking kitten! And there I am screaming and covered in blood and everybody calling me a monster…
And Blanche comes up just as Mustang’s about to lay into me and she says ‘Don’t you touch her! She only did it cause she thought you wanted her to and she adores you!’ and she put her arms around me and she said ‘It’s okay, I love you, we all still love you… I think you know what you did was wrong, don’t you?’ and I blubbered out and she said ‘We’ve got to get you cleaned off, we’re gonna put you on a new dress, then we’re gonna come back here and clean up the kitten and the mess you made and we’ll take it and bury it…” and she did.
And by the time I finished getting cleaned up and getting the…kitten gore all cleaned up and wrapping the kitten up in a towel I was just about ready to die I felt so horrible, and Uncle Garland (1) was there and I don’t even know if they were married yet, he may have just been her boyfriend or fiancé, but he put on Mustang’s old Masonic apron (2) and we buried the kitten, and because I was so upset and wanted a service Uncle Garland put on Mustang’s Masonic apron and he gave that dead kitten the Masonic last rites… ‘so mote it be’… and he insisted we all sing. But I couldn’t sing any better then than I can now and the only song I knew was London Bridge is Falling Down, falling down…falling down… so that’s what we sang over the grave of that kitten. And Mama and Daddy never did let me live that one down, but Blanche… she buried any judgment she had with the kitten. (3)
Well, for all of my life, whenever I did something really stupid… and oh God, I don’t mind telling you, I have done a LOT of really stupid things in my life… I married several of them… and Blanche was the one who said ‘don’t do that’ with the first one, ‘you’ll be miserable’ and I should have listened but… that’s water under the bridge… but anyway, whenever I did something stupid and that was often there was never any shortage of people who’d say ‘Oh God, Luna’s fucked up again’ or to call me stupid or worthless, and I believed all of them because a lot of times I was pretty stupid and I probably was worthless, but I’d get so low, and at my lowest I’d call Blanche, and no matter what she was going through in her own life and just so you’ll know, believe me, Blanche went through some ordeals in her life and for most of it it was just her and Jon and… well anyway, whenever I’d screw up or just feel that I couldn’t go on I’d call Blanche. And she wouldn’t absolve me, she might even say ‘Well what’d you think was gonna happen? That was a stupid thing to do Luna…’, she might even say ‘I told you so’ and she probably had, but she also always let me know that she may not approve of my choices, but no matter how often I screwed up or how many things I did wrong… she still loved me. I was still her precious little girl and she still loved me and no matter what she always would. And you can’t know, you just can’t know, how much I needed to hear that, more important how much I needed to feel and to know that, that her love was no strings attached, unconditional, and it wasn’t because she had to love me but because she did, she chose to, and if someone as cool as Blanche loved me forever then I must have something in me that was worth knowin.
I can’t believe she’s gone. From the time I was that little girl covered in kitten brains and kitty gore til now when I’m here, a fat old hag with grey hair, she’s always been there. I didn’t think it was possible she could die, I mean even the last time I saw her with the oxygen tubes in her nose and her hair white and thin it was just not possible…. And the last time I saw her while she was still alive we talked for a long time out on the balcony watching the waves, about nothing in particular and she told me ‘I’ll always love you honey… you’re my precious Luna…’
There was always plenty of people to tell me how sorry I was or how mean and evil I am. But Blanche even at my worst was just never one of them. She was the one who’d say ‘well get out there and do better next time, and learn your lesson…and I love you’ and then she’d always clean me off and she’d take my hand and help me bury that kitten. And I wish I could say more, I wish you could know who this woman was for those who just knew her casually or from work… she’s the woman who accepted you as you were and that’s… that’s just so rare… not many people would bury a kitten or clean its brains off your dress…
Goodbye Blanche. I love you. I always will love you forever and ever. Thanks for helping me with all those damned kittens I killed over the years… I mean that metaphorically, I love cats, I have a house full of the damned things, just thought I’d mention… Thank you so much. Thanks for always being there. Thanks for coming to see me that last time. Thanks… thanks for never not loving me.
[begins to leave the stage but stops and looks at the coffin]
Oh, and I just want you to know that since you… died first… and you got a head start on me, I just want to give you fair warning that when I get to the next life… and maybe I’ll get it right next time… I may not remember that kitten and I may not even remember your name or what you looked like… but I will sure remember you… and whether I know it consciously or not you’re the first person I’m gonna look for. And I hope I can help you next time like you helped me… until then, bye. I love you. I love you.
[looks at the congregation]
Well, that’s all I’ve got.
(1) My father
(2) My father joined the Masons when he was in service and loved doing Masonic rites or anything with the ritual. He travelled all over the south and as far away as Baltimore and Washington to do Masonic eulogies and last rites at the request of the deceased.
(3) When Luna finished telling about the kitten, a story I’d heard before but not quite as heartfelt, my brother and I were both literally nipples on knees face to the floor convulsing with laughter, there was nervous laughter and a number of audible gasps in the congregation, her mother was seething with her eyes closed and her brother and youngest son were both visible on the pallbearers bench trying desperately to not laugh while the older son was visibly trying not to heeve. My sister just had her “Good God did she really just say fuck and talk about killing a kitten at my mama’s funeral?” face on and others were mixed.
(4) Luna was being quite literal about the next life; both she and my mother believed in reincarnation and agreed that they’d lived together before as father and child (they had “memories” of being on a boat together in Roman Britain and the like) and agreed to “meet up” in the next life, for they felt they were in a circle of soulmates that included me and Luna’s youngest son. I used to be honored to be in the midst, but if they’re right about the next life I might try to call in sick or just be a neutral onlooker, something in a desk job perhaps.
When the funeral was concluded my nephew, tall and skinny and blonde (the blonde like all of us, the tall and skinny on loan from his distaff) was not sure how to react as he hadn’t encountered quite this level of eulogy before, so he was looking over to the family section from his seat between the cousins he’d never met and trying to figure out exactly what reaction was appropriate. I’m afraid we offered no help as the family section was a complete spectrum, a collector’s series of emotions.
My brother was sitting shaking his head with a look of glib but “what can you do” disgust, rather like the parent of a retarded child who’d just wet his pants at his confirmation.
My sister was visibly seething, redfaced and “Ooooh lord I wanna hit her… I wanna hit her… oooh how much I wanna hit her…” at what she considered the profane and self-centered way Luna stole the funeral “and made it all about herself”.
Luna’s mother was the Queen with a look of mortal embarassment appropriate for any memorable day in the Annus Horribilus.
My niece is simply stunned with a slight look of terror, but then she’s never seen a psychotic episode before (of which this wasn’t one) and doesn’t know who this woman is (except she’s a father’s cousin) and a realization on her face that “everything Daddy’s said about his family is true!”
Mandy is sitting with an “oh here we go again” look at her mother-in-law’s performance rather the way I used to look when my mother “went off” on a sales clerk or a rude waiter and I had to tow her line to the degree I could even though my sympathies may be against her. United front, all that.
Elisabeth and her son just have gapes of complete confusion, wondering perhaps if all white people incorporate animal abuse tales into eulogies and if so why.
As for me, I was sitting at the funeral of the most important person in my life, the person I loved the most, and I was wiping away the only two real tears that came during the entire service. I remembered why I used to think Luna is the coolest person on Earth. Say what you will about her- that she’s selfish, hypocritical, lives a life of subsidized independence taking a fortune in support over the years from the mother she loathes, that she’s a fool for her choices in love and in jobs and her refusal to sell her artwork, etc ad nauseum, but warts and disasters and questionable apparitions and all, aside from me she is the one, far more than my sister and incomparably more than my brother, who most “got” what made my mother a great woman, and I realized that low grade disillusionments and gradual fallings out notwithstanding I still love her.
It’s hard to follow a bludgeoned kitten story, but The Other Luna (Dianne Wiest) gave the concluding eulogy. I thought it was very well written and conveyed my mother as well as anything so brief should. With her permission I’ll post it, word for word, to take the smell of slaughtered kitten out of the air.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Back in the 1960s when I met Blanche for the first time, the term earth mother had just come into our language, maybe as part of the hippie culture. While the word hippie never would have been used to describe Blanche, she certainly was an earth mother. My children and I always thought that she could do anything. Everything she did was a lesson in how to do it. I truly believe that if a bear ever wandered onto her property, she could have killed it, butchered it and had it barbecued, in time for supper.
What I remember so vividly about Blanche are her hands. They were large and expressive, capable. I recall soon after I met her, she and [her daughter], who was in elementary school at the time, wore matching outfits to school, summer-colored dresses that Blanche had made. She would cook up huge meals without breaking a sweat —it didn’t matter how many people showed up—and she was a wonderful cook. Camp stew, steak, cakes, pies, vegetables. We developed a special bond when we compared recipes once and realized that our mothers had used the exact same recipe for chocolate pie. I recall telling her that I envied her ability, and that I was determined to learn how to be a good cook. She said, “Don’t you know that good cooks—like anything else that’s good—are born, not made? Concentrate on what you were born to do.”
I never saw a child who didn’t love Blanche. We met when we were assigned to teach seventh grade students at Wetumpka High School. The twelve and thirteen-year-olds—who, trust me, were much younger than today’s students of the same age— responded whole-heartedly to Blanche’s smile and warmth and confidence. I guess a good teacher is just born. And she liked to give children the occasional spectacular experience. For several summers in a row when my children were young, she invited us to spend July Fourth at her house in Titus. Because she lived “out in the country,” as my son called it, the night sky was truly a wonder. Forget the stars or the moon. A homestead without street lights meant one thing to kids and to Blanche: fireworks! Her nephews, Nigel and Shea, were about the same age as my two children, and they would be there, and we’d drag chairs out on the grass, and watch Blanche set off firecrackers on her front lawn, enormous firecrackers and bottle rockets. She was a braver woman than I.
Blanche would take in family members who needed a place to live and treat them with great kindness. For all her earth motherliness, she could be very gentle. I remember the animals Blanche had over the years, and the love she showed each one, from BB, the huge Saint Bernard, to tiny Dudley who looked like a cheerleader’s pom-pom.
Above all, I think, Blanche was a pragmatist. Once when we were visiting, I told my children not to be afraid of Dudley. He was harmless, I said, and then I reached out to pet Dudley, and he bit me. I wasn’t hurt, the bite didn’t even break the skin, but my daughter ran to tell Blanche about it. I recall that she was not overly sympathetic. “He’s an animal,” she said. “What did you expect?”
She seemed to understand the game of football as well as a coach, and she enjoyed an Auburn touchdown as much as [local legendary sports announcer] Jim Phyffe did. I went to the University of Alabama, always a sore spot with her. I guess I should be surprised that we were friends. But, being Blanche, she managed to find delight in the most peculiar circumstance. For example, we went to see the movie *Forrest Gump * together. She definitely did not take delight in the movie. She hated it, but during the scene when Forrest graduated from the University of Alabama, I felt Blanche turn to me in the dark theater. I could feel her wide grin. She didn’t say a word, but I knew what she was thinking. So . . . you and Forrest . . . both graduates of the University of Alabama.
I learned a great deal from Blanche. I watched the way she raised her children, and I tried to apply her wisdom. She taught me a great deal about teaching. “I try to teach students,” she told me once, “not just the subject.” I watched the way she dealt with loss. She and I lost our husbands at almost the same time. Once I mentioned how hard it was to raise my children by myself. Blanche was learning the same lesson, but she had some advice I have relied on ever since. “We have to play the hand that’s dealt us.”
Blanche was my friend. She loved me. She loved my children. She encouraged my best nature. When Blanche said or wrote in a letter the phrase “I love you,” you felt as if she had given you a wonderful gift. I will miss her terribly.
From there to the $500 drive to the gravesite where most of the people came in attendance as well. Her funeral was not near as huge as I’d expected, but then it was poorly timed (and not just because it was on her husband’s birthday). Her two careers were in teaching, and this was the first week of the school year when friends still employed could not be off, and in mental health, and this was the first day of the largest annual mental health conference in the nation, and it was midday on a weekday when most people work, so lots of retirees and crazy folk and the like came but not as many young people aside from close friends of her sons.
I noticed the various automobiles while Gary intoned yet another forgettable monologue to which I think the point was “death ain’t so bad”. I saw Butch and Mattie (the Tony Curtis/Lesley Jordan fusion and his she-Palance sister) emerge from a late model SUV that would easily fetch $35,000 where is as is with all defects and felt glad; they either have some of their family’s once substantial money or they made it back themselves, one or the other. I thought seriously again of how much I’d love to drop in on them, but since then Mattie has died (which I learned of by accident) so it’s just him and while he’d probably be delighted to have company who specifically wants to hear about the distant past in Billingsley it’s probably not a great idea. After all, if he can afford a nice SUV he can also afford Viagra, and who could blame him for trying to gain some playtime with a guy half his age even if the guy does look like a 40 year old Peter Ustinov? And I’m not that interested. But I will go talk with my aunt as soon as I can for her take on the Billingsley Years.
Surreal and windy experience and then it was over.
Back at the house I stayed inside and listened to Gary lead yet more prayers and people say “I lost my own mother/cousin/boyfriend/girlfriend/dog in 19_ _ so I know what it’s like”, etc., until I simply couldn’t. I led my cousin Luna and her younger son onto the patio where we formed a Smokers Court in Exile and others, my friends and others less impressed with Garyan oratory and finally my niece (who if she’s not really really sheltered knows I’m gay now by the stories that were flying) and soon we began imitations of Gary and his shadow demonstration that had us all damned near puking, especially when he came out to say goodbye and pumped all of our hands with this “little oatmeal raisin hand” as a friend of mine calls it. And then didn’t leave.
I asked Luna to marry me, only half joking. “Think about it” I explained, “You’re almost 60 and there’s only one way to top your last engagement in shock value and that’s marrying your gay first cousin who’s almost 20 years younger than you are and when better to accept his invitation than on the day of his mother’s funeral?” She wore my ankh ring for the rest of her stay and volunteered to think about it but ultimately declined, whereupon I made similar proposal to her son, the perpetually stoned former diCaprio turned Grizzly Adams, as “we have relatives and friends in Massachusetts where it’s legal, and the only way you’ll ever trump your mom’s scandals lies in front of you… and don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be consummated unless there’s a reliable camera crew there…” but alas, tis my destiny to remain single.
And finally all departed save for my siblings, my sister’s husband, and Gary. Who went with us to the grave because he doesn’t have the sense not too. I’m not sure really what seeing the now filled in grave was supposed to accomplish but… it seemed reasonable. I just wish I’d had an engagement to announce.
But there’s always next funeral.
To be continued with the story of Lou Ida and the “Here’s What Else My Daddy Said” exchange
Sampiro, thank you for writing, remembering, putting truth to your Mama’s life. I can imagine how horrifyin’ odd Luna’s eulogy was at the time for all assembled, but, it was so hearfelt and real, and tore my heart out. It’s the best love to be there in the worst seat and still come right flat out with your heart totally exposed.
Good Grace and Godspeed, Blanche Sampiro. So well done, Jon Sampiro. Thank you for the stamina and huevos to write it here. Get some rest, man, and keep writing.