The Smoke Bomb, The Fight and the Funeral

The wind pushed at our clothes mildly as we stood next to my grandmother's grave, watching the coffin lowering into ground. Our matriarch had at last sung her threnody as the family gathered on the hill behind the property, watching them send her gently into the last repose.

Tearful eyes remained downcast, red-rimmed with hours of grief and mine were no exception. The pastor stood at the head of the open mouth of the earth and said his farewell prayer. The grim departing wrenched sobs from the onlookers as they recalled a remarkable life.

My aunts bowed their heads somberly, silent prayer and heavy sighs the only mercy for their aching hearts. The moments arced by like an electrical current, too fast to capture any one part of them but knowing the damage here was irreversible.

Everyone wore black and white. My Aunt Sabrah, the taller and more statuesque of the sisters wore an all-black tea-length dress, her long wavy brown hair curling above her forehead like a movie star from the Garbo years.

My mother had managed to score a black skirt suit from a local thrift shop, and we'd come up with a nice, pleated shirt. Mom has always been a colorful person and black things have more than a little difficulty finding their way into her wardrobe. (She'd forgotten the outfit she chose for this occasion, and we lived several hours away.)

Mother's beautiful curly red hair shone pink and melon-like in the sunshine filtering in between trees and clouds and even she, in her "devil-may-care" personality, felt the pang of reality grip at her as the crank had sounded, moving the casket closer to finality.

Everyone shifted uneasily, lowering their eyes, murmuring things to others in comforting tones and suddenly, there was a slight shout.

How it began or the subject matter drawing the ugly thing into the open are matters I cannot ascertain, but my mother's sisters began bickering. The casket had not yet made its full progression when some physical impasse was made, and the fighting ensued.

I was horrified, too stupefied by the bizarre nature of their behavior to react, when my mother lovingly tugged at my elbow and pulled me to one side. Quickly, as a spy trying to keep hidden some international secret, she pressed a hard orb into my hand.

"Hurry." She breathed quietly. "Go down to mama's house and put this under the hood of your Uncle Carl's new car. I want you to light it, then run up here and tell him his car's on fire."

I opened my hand. In the palm of it, rested a round, gray smoke bomb.

"Mom." I protested, pointing to the casket making its slow progression into the ground. "Funeral!"

"Roni." She replied in kind, pointing to her squabbling sisters. "Fight."

With a nod, I was down the road without a backward glance. Now I was almost thirty years old at the time but held no qualm with doing as my mother bade me. Her decisions had almost always served well in the past and not wanting to further the altercations of the day, I complied.

As I lifted the hood to his sedan, my cousin Ray came running over to me to see what I was up to.

"Is something wrong with Carl's car?" He asked.

I glanced at him hurriedly. The sun shone on his freckles and his carroty red hair glistened in the brilliance. He smiled at me; his blue eyes alight with curiosity. Ray was in his early twenties but even to that moment, I could not help recalling what an adorable boy he had been.

Without comment, I nodded, returning to my task and trying to find the best possible place to put the object, without putting my uncle's car in any real danger.

Ray took one look at the smoke bomb and told me I should be ashamed of myself.

"This is the day of a funeral!" He complained, ramming his fists into the pockets of his black trousers. "You're worse than your mom!"

"Who do you think gave me the smoke bomb?" I replied, lighting the wick and closing the lid. He shook his head, leaving me to my mischief, and I began running for the graveyard.

As I arrived, I shouted and waved my arms about and got Uncle Carl's attention just as my grandmother's casket finished its descent into the earth.

"Uncle Carl!" I shouted. "Your car's on fire!" At once, the fighting stopped and everyone began hurrying down the road toward the car, which was parked right outside my grandmother's house.

You would think, that after all the years my mother had pulled that prank on my uncle, (not to mention the others assembled there), someone might have guessed she had been at the root of the disaster. All the same, seeing as how she had never left the gravesite and I…sweet little old me…would never do such a thing… it must be true! Surely no one would do something so crass at a funeral of all places!

Carl threw up the hood to his car, smoke billowing out from underneath, and he began roving over the entire engine looking for the source of the problem. Having spent many years ministering to the needs of his vehicles, it was not uncommon for him to fix his own car.

After some time, he scratched his head, glanced around for a moment searching the faces of everyone there, and then spoke.

" That smells almost like an electrical fire. Daddy." He called to my Great Uncle Luke. "You reckon it could be an electrical problem?"

Uncle Luke was no fool. He and my mother had always been in some sort of personal prank war or another over the years and that man knew the smell of a smoke bomb like a cat knows its milk. He turned his head away laughing and I decided to let my uncle have some relief.

"You reckon it could be that smoke bomb under your car, Uncle Carl?" I asked.

He leaned his head over to look, his deep brown eyes narrowing as he caught sight of the naughty object, and immediately turned to glare at my mother.

"Irene!" He shouted.

"I didn't do it!" She responded in mock surprise. "I was with you!"

"That's right." He murmured, taking a deep breath and scanning the faces of those assembled. I suppose he hoped to see some sign of humor, but everyone looked on in awe. He caught my mother's gaze hard and the standoff began. Her green eyes pierced right through him in denial and for long moments, no one moved. Eventually, Uncle Carl determined he was no match for my mother and turned around to lean on the car.

"Roni did it!" My mother finally admitted, pointing her finger at me and Uncle Carl immediately started laughing.

"She made me do it." I answered defensively, pointing back at mom.

Pretty soon everyone was pointing fingers, looking at the smoke bomb, laughing and calling up old memories. As I recall we wound up sitting at my grandmother's table eating KFC, picking over old family photographs and reliving old times. The scene was convivial enough and whether my aunts ever argued again over the same thing or not, I cannot be sure. Of one thing, however… I am quite certain.

The day of my grandmother's funeral ended exactly as she would have had it end; as a family reliving the joy they'd shared with her, and in her home… laughing, talking, honoring and loving one another.