My Father's Funeral

My parents visited Texas to attend my older sister’s nursing program graduation. During that visit, my newly-minted nurse of a sister noticed how much my father’s health was failing, especially pertaining to his diabetes and heart disease. He’d never been healthy, really. He was obese and diabetic. He struggled with diet after diet. Finally, when I was in high school, he underwent bariatric surgery. I’m not entirely convinced that it didn’t, in the end, kill him.

After their visit, I remember spending time with a co-worker and friend who lived in the same apartment complex. I cried, believing my sister about his health, and pre-emptively worrying that he’d never walk me down the aisle at this rate. My dad was dying. I cried.

Years later, I was driving between suburbs, beginning my day of piano lessons. My sister called, and told me to pull over. So, into a Subway parking lot I went. Clearly, something was wrong. She had moved back home, near our parents. And my father was officially in an ambulance, on his way to the hospital after yet another heart attack. She wasn’t sure if he’d make it. I went to my next lesson- not knowing what else to do. I had an odd break afterward, and waited while chatting with the student’s mom, who’d become a friend, about waiting to hear if my dad was dead.

And, then it came. He was gone.

I cried. I finished teaching the rest of my lessons for the day, knowing that having something to do would be better than sitting alone with this. A decision fell on me quickly: did I want to try and make it home as soon as humanly possible to see his body? Did they need to have it embalmed before cremation so there was time for me to see him? Money was tight for all of us, so I told them that no, he never wanted that. I didn’t need to see a body to process that he was dead.

Then, it came to planning when to hold the funeral. I pushed to have it within a week or so, so that my live-in boyfriend, Bernie could come with me and be the support I knew I would need to handle both grief and my family. This turned out to be the biggest mistake of all. He needed to leave for a work trip immediately afterwards, and I should have simply asked him to use the money he spent on his ticket to help with my share of the bills so I could take time off work and be home on my own.

We had 36 hours in town. That’s all I could afford. Last-minute flights aren’t cheap, even with bereavement, which didn’t apply to my boyfriend. My mother paid for my ticket, and Bernie was able to cover his expenses. The downside at the time was that I didn’t have paid time off built into my business. Any lessons I missed would have to be made up later or chalked up to lost income. Bernie had something like $16,000 in his bank account, But, that was his money. I worked twice the hours for half his pay, and still generally paid half the bills.

We arrived in town the morning before the funeral. My sister and brother-in-law were separated after he’d had an online relationship. My mother was all over the place. The anchor in all this chaos was my best childhood friend, Jane. Jane showed up at the door with tacos, doughnuts, coffee, and whiskey to cover whatever bases were needed and followed them all up with the biggest, most amazing hug anyone could ever hope for in that moment.

Family came and sat with us. Photo albums were dragged out of crates. My mother brought my dad’s scrapbook out, but I wasn’t able to see it while I was expected to keep my great-aunt (on my mother’s side) company. Why? No offense to my aunt, but I feel certain at this point that she would understand if I wanted to see the sort of things my dad had journaled, saved, and curated as a younger man.

The whiskey was consumed. I had a tantrum about making photo boards look artistically scattered instead of lined up in rows. I accused my older sister and younger brother of always having some sort of connection I was never privy to. Really, I was simply the one who hadn’t been there. I lived far away. They had reconnected with our father while I managed to get to speaking terms with him over the phone, never knowing if he and I could have managed any better, even in person.

Meanwhile, Bernie drank an entire bottle of scotch in the garage and proceeded to tell my brother-in-law what he was doing wrong in or what was wrong in his marriage. And the real mess began. As my dose of whiskey wore off and I found my emotional footing, I walked into the mud room only to see Bernie passed out on some coats. Evelyn, my sister, told me to simply leave him there. But it was cold, and I worried his soft southern blood would freeze. So, I made her help me move him to the couch. My second big mistake in all of this.

It turns out that if Bernie was drunk, passed out, and woke up… all hell broke loose. He crawled around the house. He stripped down to his underwear. He crawled up the stairs to get away from me (while my brother-in-law chuckled and took pictures of my drunk boyfriend in superman underwear on his staircase. I can’t blame him. Now, I’d do the same). Terrified he’d wake up the nephews, I followed him. Bernie screamed that I was “one of those drinkers!” and slammed a door in my face before attempting to crawl out a second story window. Eventually, I coaxed or maybe simply chased him back downstairs. The underwear came off, and he was passed back out on the kitchen floor, buck-ass naked.

Once again the older and wiser one, Evelyn told me I should simply leave him there. My brain had gone completely into control mode, though. Everything seemed to be chaos, and I was lost in all this wreckage, but I would NOT let my nephews find a naked uncle when they went to get their cereal, even if that’s how he deserves to be remembered.

I got him dressed, and loaded him into my sister’s mini van to drive to our hotel room at 3am. He spit on his pants over and over. He opened the door and tried to jump out of the moving car repeatedly. I was frayed, broken, and so, so alone. After propping him up against walls and half-carrying, half-dragging him into our hotel room, he fell on top of me onto the bed as though now we were going to have sex. I screamed. I pushed him off me. I crawled into the other bed, curled into a ball, and cried myself to sleep.

Nine o'clock came quickly. I woke him up. I showered, and got him into the shower where he sat and probably fell back asleep. I got us into the car, bought us bagels, and drove to the church where the memorial service was to be. I hugged people, said thank you. I tried to be strong for my mother. I thought there would be a place to plug my phone in to play the playlist I had put together, and found nothing.

I’m not sure we talk much about how exhausting it is to host the funeral for a loved one. You’re barely functional, and now you have to shake hands and give hugs and nod at a million stories from other people while they offer their grief and condolences. A friend played guitar and sang “When the River Meets the Sea,” which I knew my father had wanted at his funeral. My brother and nephew got up to speak. People asked if I planned to perform, but no. I couldn’t. Music had been more of a fight than a bridge between my father and I.

I learned to play guitar from watching him and some guidance on basic chords and fingerpicking. I learned the violin because he decided we each had to learn an instrument. Beyond that, it all went downhill. When I was fourteen and playing coffee shop open mics, he told me I had an unoriginal voice and would never go anywhere in music. He and I both lived with my sister for a time, and I came home from a gig for him to tell me from deep into his bourbon and diet Coke how I knew nothing about connecting with an audience. He droned on about how he stopped performing because he was simply too powerful a presence and that the power scared him. At his funeral, people came up and told me that weeks before, he’d told them how I “finally found my voice,” something I’d specifically asked him to stop saying years beforehand. Even while on decent speaking terms, I learned that he and I could not discuss music, ever. So, no. I would not get on a stage in remembrance for him.

While I greeted and mingled and made jokes about my hangover, Bernie sat in a pew away from everyone looking generally miserable and speaking to no one. During the service, he was next to me, but when I broke down and went to lean on him, he told me not to, because he felt sick. We left the luncheon early because he had to poop and simply could not consider doing so in the little church bathroom.

Family came over, and I changed into comfier clothes. Bernie sat next to me complaining so only I could hear about how tired he was, despite refusing my offer for him to sleep in one of the boys’ beds upstairs. We left, and flew back to Texas. And the next day he left for his work trip.

I sat alone in our little apartment wondering if everything would simply be better if I weren’t alive anymore. I was a bad daughter, a bad sister, and not even my boyfriend thought I was worth the effort. And all this was before he began to hold that $900 over my head as proof of his “love” and my lack of gratitude for his sacrifice.

At some point, I wrote this little poem:

I kind of hope I die today,

She whispered as she drove away

No one likes Mondays anyway

And I'm sure my dog would be okay.

My boyfriend, he may cry a bit

But with time he'd get over it

And find another, a better fit

In better shape, with better tits.

My friend says he'll be mad at me

A kind of anger I've never seen

But I'm not trying to be mean

I want to flee, to be so free.

Maybe this will be my time

My way out across that line

Away from all the muck and mire

The shattered dreams and desire

I wish that I could say good-bye

But that option won't be mine

To plan and try would be too sly

Not a good way for me to die

So I'll wait a bit until my turn

Secretly hope to not return

Because inside my soul does burn

With pain and sadness I know I earned.