My grandma's funeral was beautiful. I specifically remember her telling me she didn't want a sad funeral; she wanted everyone to wear bright colors and to laugh. I'm so happy we were able to fulfill that wish. A few members of my family had a bet going re: the amount of funeral-goers with my grandfather betting 300, my aunt betting 100, and my great-aunt betting 60. I went with 150 and won the box of See's Candy.
My mom suggested we invite Maho because "American funerals are crazy" so we brought her along for what I imagine was not the most representative American funeral. Having her there gave the day structure. Her roommate had gone home for the weekend so I slept over and in the morning, after breakfast, I practiced my eulogy and singing Amazing Grace with her. I didn't feel anything. The week my grandma was dying, I witnessed everyone in my family in each stage of grief, but I had somehow fast-tracked myself to acceptance. I hadn't cried since the day she passed away and it stayed that way until, in the church, my mom urged me over to her spot in the back of the church. I walked back there, past the dozens and dozens of faces I didn't recognize, but who recognized me, and saw my grandma's best friend, Susan. I hadn't seen her in almost a decade and the second I laid on eyes on her, I burst into tears. She hugged me tight, held back her own tears like the bad bitch she is, and held me at an arm's length to take a look at me.
"You know, Martina, you're young lady now," she said. "But the green hair is a phase, right?"
My uncle's ex-wife was in attendance, another person so integral to my childhood who I hadn't seen in years and years, and I sobbed into her shoulder. I stayed close to my family and away from the crowd until the service began. My uncle talked about my grandma's transition from homemaker to businesswoman, my aunt talked about my grandma as a workaholic full of life, and I spoke about the best grandma to have ever graced this planet. During my uncle's speech, I hadn't really cried, maybe because the majority of what he was saying were things I had never heard about her before. But between his eulogy and my aunt's came a musical performance by two family friends and suddenly, the rows that contained my little family flowed with huge, ugly, cathartic tears. The tissue box passed from hand to hand, up and down the rows, and for the first time in my life I saw my brother sobbing. Poor Maho sat between the two of us, tearing up herself. My cousin Ajay and I laughed about it later. "There's something about music."
When the service ended, the funeral director instructed everyone to exit through the front, pay their respects to my grandma's urn, her portrait draped with two bright purple leis beside it, and move to the gravesite. Seeing the impending stampede of mourners headed my way, I made a beeline for the back of the church, where my cousin Lindsay and her baby were seated. "I gave eulogies for both my grandparents," she said. "It's tough." We sat there while everyone cleared out. A man, a straggler, approached me. "You don't know me but I know you," he said. "I was Bridget's boyfriend." Bridget, my grandma's business partner, who was killed in a hit-and-run a few years ago. "Did you know she once saved my life?" I asked. He didn't. I told him the story of how I was choking on a piece of hard candy when she gave me the Heimlich at the top of the stairs at my grandma's office, and how I watched as the candy flew from my mouth to the bottom of the stairs.
At the gravesite, when everyone but the family had left and they were waiting to put the urn in the ground, my uncle Tyler put one of the leis around me, the other around my aunt. When the urn was in the ground and the funeral director asked if there was anything we'd like to include with it, my aunt and I simultaneously seized the leis from around our necks without any thought and draped them over the urn.
The funeral was held in the same church my father's was. I asked my mom if my dad had the same amount of people as my grandma. "Your dad's was bursting out of the church. There were people standing up and down the aisles and out the door." That's what happens when you die young. And now my grandma is buried a few feet up the hill from my dad, both of their graves keeping watch over the graves of the small children whose pinwheels I used to spin when we came to visit my dad. I know there's no heaven, but I know that there was a universe before both my grandma and my dad were born, a universe when they were both alive, and an interim when my dad was alone in the ether. Finally, there is universe for them both again.
The first interaction I had at the reception was from two older women who were talking together when I walked in. The mother of my dad's childhood best friend told me everyone had always wondered what happened to Ryan's baby, and she was happy to know I had turned out so well. The other woman was an agent, a colleague of my grandma, and she told me my grandma loved me and always complained I lived too far away. The theme of conversation between the people who knew me, though I didn't know them, was that my grandma loved me and would never stop talking about me. Complete strangers to me knew so much about me. My grandma loved me.
My aunt brought boxes upon boxes upon boxes of family photos for everyone to look through. She converted old Super 8 footage and VHS tapes full of family video to DVD and they played throughout the reception. Ajay went diligently went through every single photo, occasionally handing me a giant stack of pictures of myself I had never seen. My family is a well-photographed one and I had a great time seeing every single stage of life of every person documented heavily. Lexi arrived and had a cry about my grandma even though they'd never met, which I really appreciated. She and Maho hung out as I talked to old, old friends and rifled through photos. Guests began trickling out and after we all took shots of some Greek liquor, just the family (and Maho) was left. My aunt gave me a DVD of Christmas 1990. "Your father does a Brando imitation, it's hilarious."
Maho and I got back to her room, exhausted, and got ready for bed. As she went to take a shower, I put in the DVD of Christmas 1990 and heard my father's voice for the first time in my life. I cried steadily through 50 minutes of my grandma 24 years younger than I had last seen her, playing with her dog and making dinner, through my mom's bewildered but grateful expression upon receiving extravagant gifts for her first Christmas in America, through my dad hiding his face from the camera with a magazine. I was a voyeur of life before I was even a thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment