Five nights of bands, beverages and baseball in New York City, each ending not necessarily with sleep but rather a grateful, graceless collapse onto a hardwood floor tufted with eye-watering cat hair. Then home for three virtual all-nighters spent paring the roughly 2,581 things that happened down to an acceptable stab at this week's cover story. (You don't get to read about the mook pounding ominously on a car while admonishing it to "back the fuck up," or the tequila shots with lawyers, or how much John Vanderslice rules, sorry.) Then, a late-night jam with some friends in preparation for the Hurricane Katrina benefit show this Sunday afternoon at the State Theatre, followed by a celebration of the successful completion/survival of all of the above.
I am beyond tired. I am operating from that sketchy, too-aware state of sleep-deprived perception familiar only to insomniacs, law students, and employees of Wall Street and the medical arts still in their first year. I am more than ready for a weekend at my family's vacation home in Alabama, a spot that Hurricane Rita will miraculously miss but — I had hoped — would still see enough peripheral rain to keep one in bed and on the couch for 72 straight hours.
Friday morning, while Joey N and I sleep it off on the same mattress, far enough away from each other to prevent a re-enactment of the "pillows scene" from Planes, Trains & Automobiles, my cell phone rings. I assume it's Joey N's roommate P, getting us up and on the road to Alabama, and lounge for another 15 minutes before checking the message.
It isn't Joey N's roommate P. It's my father, calling from Austin.
Sometime during the night, my paternal grandmother has died.
Daisie Inez Harrell, 91, passed away at home in DeQueen, Arkansas. She died of what the obituaries tactfully term "a lengthy illness"; in this case, a years-long bout with Alzheimer's that rendered her nearly catatonic some time ago. Now, I have successfully avoided attending a funeral for 33 years, less out of fear of confronting death than timing and a distaste for the regimentation of the grieving process. To me, going to a funeral has always seemed like getting an enema or having my nipples pierced — it's fine for the people who feel better for having done it, but I don't think I need to make the gesture in order to prove who I am or how I feel.
But, with the uncomfortable exception of one black-sheep writer living in St. Petersburg, the Harrells are very big on both family and religion. My grandfather needs my father, and my father needs us all, and I'm going.
So Milo goes to Peaches', and my 12-year-old gray double-breasted suit and I go in a considerable hurry to the airport, where my just-booked flight to Dallas turns out to be delayed by two-and-a-half hours. It's 9 p.m. when I'm picked up at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport by my parents, and midnight when we pull up to the large brick house in DeQueen where Grandma and Papa Jack have resided together for the last 30 years.
DeQueen, Arkansas, where my father grew up (and met my mother, fresh from Texas, when they were both in high school), is a tiny town of less than 6,000 souls near the Oklahoma border, the seat of "dry" Sevier County. Even in the rainy dark — Hurricane Rita is headed this way — I recognize all of the landmarks of my childhood visits as we pull into the driveway. The magnolia tree in which I once climbed so high I was afraid to climb down, and fell as a result. The junk-filled detached garage housing the boat we took out fishing at least once per trip. The tall above-ground concrete entrance to the cellar, which looked — and still looks — like the gateway to some vampire-filled crypt.
The familiarity is overwhelming.
Still, I'm in a dry county, with both a funeral and a hurricane bearing down on me.
Work is not the opposite of a vacation. This is.
My Aunt Linda and Uncle Bill are already here with Papa Jack and maybe half a ton of comfort food. The following day, more relatives, condolences and comfort foods arrive steadily, filling the house with laughter, awkward silences, and the smells of cake and fried everything. There are few tears, but the air seems heavy; there's a tiredness here that makes my recent work- and lifestyle-fueled exhaustion seem like a meth high by comparison.
Saturday night comes, and with it, the "viewing." I stay behind to answer the phone and watch the house — my grandfather is afraid some ghoul will read the obit in the local paper, and try to ransack the place — until more relatives arrive. They do; my sister and cousin Pitty remain while cousin Jerry drives me through the wind and rain to have a look at the body of my dead grandmother.
I expect to be offended, outraged at the sight of a loved one done up in a horrific, implausible attempt at life. Instead, I'm calmed, relieved, even happy to see her one more time. The clichés are true — she looks peaceful. Her thin lips curve, forming the slightest smile. I imagine she's amused that somebody thought she'd need her comically oversized eyeglasses in a pretty casket shut up mineshaft-dark under six feet of earth.
Or maybe she's finally remembered whom all these people are, making such a fuss over her.
"She looks better than I've seen her in the last six months," says my mother.
"In the last three years," says Aunt Linda, my father's sister.
Sunday is impossibly beautiful, the perfect Day After The Big Storm. After a valiant but doomed attempt to make a dent in the still-accumulating stores of food, we put on our suit jackets and return to the funeral home.
A preacher who's never met my grandmother tries gamely but lamely to put together everything her offspring have told him about her over the last few weeks into something that's both an intimate portrait and a commercial for Jesus. I try to be angry, but can't — he's saying nice things about my Grandma. He yields the podium to a much older preacher, one who wears cowboy boots and tells stories of fishing with Papa Jack. He explains that while our pain feels unbearable, it's really just another part of the price we pay in order to experience love — and that love at any cost is still a bargain. I like him immediately.
I help carry the casket from the funeral home to the hearse and from the hearse to a tent on the spot where they'll dig a grave when the ground dries enough. It's lighter than I expected. The younger, newer preacher says a few more words, and then folks of all ages line up to give my grandfather a hug. Afterward, Aunt Linda leads us to another part of the cemetery and shows us where Grandma's parents are buried. We stand in the sun, drained but feeling that certain refreshment of a hard job well done.
I was right about funerals being far more for the living than the dead. But I was wrong in thinking them an exercise in ego, a chance for individuals to show each other how deeply they feel. They're not about grief; They're about union, the commonality of loss. And on balance, it's tough to think of that as a bad thing.
"That was nice," says my sister, as we climb into cousin Jerry's SUV. "But it definitely reinforces my certainty that I want to be cremated."
Amen to that.
But first, I'm thinking about having my nipples pierced.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2005.