Life at a Funeral & The Shadow Of Her Smile

Rain, thicker-than-Vicks fog and blanket humidity meant I did not find those fried clams south of Hartford. Since the price of a gallon of gas is soo cheap now, I backtracked to 91 North and headed south on Route 9 towards Old Saybrook, where Einstein summered for a time, legendarily handing out dimes to youngin's on the street. He used to visit friends in Watch Hill, RI. from which he sailed alone on the Atlantic without a life preserver even though he could not swim. I stopped at archetypal-New England Essex, CT for a lunch at The Black Seal, which is a fixture in the town and can always counted on for good fare. The bar crowd was mix of working men and older conservative wealthy men who spoke of money, NYC and not much else. Talkin' 'bout the Amtrak shore line from New London to NYC to meet an old friend for lunch. Are they downsizing? I doubt it. Thanks to the heat, humidity and my stupidity, I left Essex by the wrong road. This is getting long already and I haven't reached the gist of the funeral and seeing an old friend on a whim.

Along with my disabled-from-birth cousin Peter Chiaradio with whom I stayed, we got to my Uncle Cosmo's wake about 5 pm on this past Monday. After my cousin Peter's father died at the age of 59 in 1981 and his mother gave up the ghost a few years later, my Uncle Cosmo tried to help his brother's son by being his surrogate father. My cousin Peter lives in poorly maintained low income housing. His rent is $290/month and his disability is about $460/month. He smokes cigarettes, a lot. Peter could snag a 20 hour a week job that would do him good and help with the bills. Since his speech is slurred and he walks with a pronounced limp, he knows that he will get only menial work since he is disabled. He has more friends than I will ever have. Some are out only to use him since he has big heart, but others are friends in the struggle to survive. The only thing I could say to him was for him to watch his ass. I said other things, but I know that I was wasting my breath. He has to father himself. He has a tough road ahead. I hope that I can encourage him to walk with his head up high and regain his self-respect.

After spotting him at the funeral home, my first objective was to return the favor of a tongue lashing to my cousin David. I neglected to take it outside, but lowered my voice somewhat and then lowered the boom. He was having a discussion with another cousin on a couch. I proceeded to go up one side of him and down the other. He never said a word except to try to ignore me and continue his conversation. That did not fly. I asked him if he knew what "niente!" meant. I translated it for him the magical three times. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Emphatically, with fingers and thumb together. I felt my long gone grandmother and father, uncles and aunts fueling my articulated anger. He asked for it and he got it in spades. I showed him how Sicilian I could be. No one says things like he said to me last November and gets away with it. Relieved, I paid my respects to my Uncle Cosmo. You had a good long run. Old Grandad and cigarettes. Stories that curled up like smoke above your shoulder. He was the last of the great storytellers in my family. Toughy they called him and he was. Many people were there. Many more would have been there had he not outlived them.

Black thunderstorms threatened the afternoon of the funeral. The air was heavy. His nieces and friends recalled him at the funeral home. Some of the tributes were heartfelt and delivered with grace, humor, tears and compassion. People clapped and bravos! were heard. Uncle Coz, it was a good send off. A brass band playing St. James Infirmary (http://www.redhotjazz.com/songs/louie/savoy/stjames.ram and the returning second line are the only things that could have made it better. I believe that the message of compassionate mercy that was stressed in various ways had an effect upon most of the people there. A good thing from a death and loss.

After the funeral, I took some caciocavallo and Regaleali Nero d'Avola over to my Uncle's home to share with his son and daughter.

On the way there, I drove by an old friend's home and noticed a car with Connecticut plates in the driveway. I knew that his sister Dale, for whom I had a soft spot in my heart when a pup, lived in that state. It had been some 40 some years since I had last seen her. I had thought more than few times about a chance meeting someday. I walked up to the door and asked if someone named Dale was there. She answered the door dressed elegantly in black with silver bracelets on her slim wrists, like she just stepped out of a Fellini film. She said that she was who she was and asked who I was. I stepped inside and removed my Raybans. We looked each other in the eyes and within a split second she broke into her memorable smile and her eyes sparkled. "Oh, my God!" she cried. We hugged and she led me in to the kitchen to speak with her 90 year old mother who is another marvel of lucidity and humor. She had just finished making her own pizza. In 85 degree heat and humidity. After I told her who I was she instantly remembered me. Like her mother, Dale has a great sense of humor and a hardy infectious laugh. I told her mother that her daughter had mercilessly shot me down and would not give me the time of day. Totally untrue. Dale protested, laughed and blushed. The truth is that I was shy and awkward. Still am, somewhat. The years have been kind to her and she has retained that spark that attracted me to her so long ago. She now has two grown offspring, one a lawyer in Boston and another a daughter looking to enter Skidmore College. I could sense that she is an honestly devoted mother and seems content and grounded in life. She and her husband, a successful cardiologist, summer on Groton Long Point where the homes of the affluent are cheek by jowl. We reminisced and laughed a lot. It was so good to see her and I am glad that I made the stop. I was also pleased to hear that her life has been full and satisfying. Reunions and re-membering. People and things coming back together after events and circumstances have fatefully scattered them. The river flows on carrying it all back together into the sea. Time is a river with no banks, as Chagall painted.

"Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being.

This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform  the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it from the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to be between one human being and another, no longer one that flows from man to woman. And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.

And one more thing: Don't think that the great love which was once granted to you, when you were a boy, has been lost; how can you know whether vast and generous wishes didn't ripen in you at that time, and purposes by which you are still living today? I believe that that love remains so strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life."

Rainier Maria Rilke, "Letters To a Young Poet"

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Comments

[gastropoda]

Thanks for reinforcing my aversion to family funerals. Or should I just say Family? Sorry about Uncle Cosmos, though.

[Marco]

Regina, thankfully this one was a little different than the others, plus I got to see an old friend.