Funeral Trip, Day 2

Yesterday, after making sure there was someone to take care of my dog and look after the house, I drove out to Tallahassee and met up with my younger brother Paul who's just started living in a hole-in-the-wall bungalow a few miles from FSU.  He's just finished his third year studying astrophysics and is a member of several punk and folk bands around campus.  They're pressing a vinyl this Summer for the first time with a few other bands, which includes a song he wrote that really makes me realize how talented he is.  I used to be jealous, now I'm just happy to enjoy the fruits of his effort.

His washing machine was broken, so when I got in around 10pm we took some of the stuff he needed for the trip to a 24-hour coin laundromat.  While waiting, we hightailed it to a late night deli and got some sandwiches and talked about his new music projects.  It'd be nice if I manage to get into FSU for my graduate studies, if just to be able to hang around him some more.  We hardly see each other as it is.  Plus, I'd like to spend the entirety of what's left of my twenties in that kind of college town environment.  After we got his clothes washed and home I tried (and failed) to get him to watch East of Eden, one of Elia Kazan's more famous works and James Dean's big screen debut.

After getting some shuteye, we woke up this morning and set out on the long drive to Orlando where most of my extended family lives.  We made sure to get thoroughly caffeinated before leaving town, which we undertook by keeping to old highways avoiding the tedium of the major interstates.  It's too bad gas is getting so expensive, because I really enjoy taking the back roads and getting a glimpse at all the small towns and scenery that you usually miss out on.  During my senior year of college I took a road trip in that fashion all throughout the South to check out the old Blues country.  Jacksonville to Biloxi to Jackson to Memphis to Birmingham and back.

The four-and-a-half hours didn't seem quite that bad and we were in Orlando before we knew it.  Unfortunately, that's when we were ambushed via telephone that the whole of our extended family, plus the families of my grandparents' siblings were in attendance at a luncheon at my uncle's nouveau riche, modern mansion.  It was the first time I'd seen it since he sold his last one and being there reaffirmed my belief that some people have more money than what's good for them.  We parked in the courtyard and entered a living room that looked bigger than a lot of houses I've been in, complete with marble fixtures and several indoor waterfalls.  Luckily we quickly found our punk/video game designer cousin and her fiancé who were seated with my older brother, Thomas, around a collection of leather couches and managed to avoid most of the social awkwardness.

I was glad to see my grandparents, I got really lucky in that department.  Sweet, funny, honest, dependable.  Salt of the Earth, etc., etc.  My grandfather had on a brave face, but I could tell my grandmother was really trying hard to make it through the day.  I can't imagine what it must be like to have to bury your child.  The day didn't turn out to be so bad, I was able to see many relatives that I hadn't seen in a while, and the mood was much more upbeat than I expected for the day before a funeral.  I guess people were just happy to be seeing each other again for the first time in years.  It's just too bad that it took something like this to get the family together.

Paul and I were able to make our escape after not too long in order to hit the mall, as he didn't really have anything in the way of formal clothing.  The last time he was at a serious dress-up event was probably when he was baptized and that was when he was two.  I'm sure those clothes don't fit anymore.  We got back to my grandparents' house around dinner time and ate with them, my dad, aunt, Thomas and my deceased uncle's daughter and mother (they divorced about 12 years ago).  Again, this too went surprisingly smoothly given the grim auspice of the event.  Maybe we're just really that WASP-y.

When dinner was through my grandmother came in and gave my younger brother and I my uncle's old guitar.  We hesitated at first, because it felt a little dirty taking a dead man's personal possession.  It seemed to make her happy to know that someone was going to be able to use it, so we accepted it.  Paul checked the tuning while I got my bongos and we went out onto the dock.  It was finally cooling off a bit, and it felt good to be out over water with the breeze.  We just sat there for an hour playing some music.  It felt good not to have to talk about what was heavily in the air around us.  There isn't an answer and any angle you try to take on it is going to fall short and just leave you upset and confused.

The funeral is early tomorrow.  I really should try to sleep.

Next post

I got a call today from my father telling me that his youngest brother, my uncle, died early this morning.  He lived alone and it looks like he had a seizure in the middle of the night.  He mentioned it with all the significance as if he was telling me that we were out of milk, so it took a second to register what he'd said.  In all the hindsight of 12 hours though, it seems appropriate.  How should someone sound when spreading that kind of news?  I'd rather hear it the way I did than have him try it with a phony emotional response or air of solemnity.  The truth is that they'd been estranged for several years ever since my uncle dove headfirst into alcoholism.

I'm from a family where we all sort of keep each other at an arm's length.  I usually don't hear from my siblings for months at a time.  I did have a clichéd kinship with my uncle stemming from how we were both misfits of our respective generations.  He used to tell me stories of seeing R.E.M. playing one of their first gigs after helping them pile out of a rusty van and on Christmas he would always send me mixed tapes he'd made of bands he'd liked in his youth.  While I loved him I know I don't want to end up like him.  Alcoholism aside, I don't want my best days to be my adolescence.  And while we all die alone, I'd like to not have lived alone.

It's funny, I never properly knew anyone who died in the first 25 years of my life, and this is the third since February.  It's not like I thought it would be; the crushing specter of mortality hasn't haunted my every waking moment.  I haven't cried or even spent much time thinking of them.  I guess my only concern has been my lack of a response.  Do I not care?  Am I a terrible person for focusing more on myself and my emotional state than the people who aren't here any longer?  Of course we can't ever really feel bad for anyone without using ourselves as a reference.  When I think someone else is "sad" the best I can do is imagine how I feel when I'm "sad" and assume that they have that going on inside their brain.  It's what sadism, masochism and altruism all have in common; we're only driven to do what makes us feel "good," "right" or "whole."  I don't think we can ever objectively care for other people but I'm going to live the rest of my life pretending that we can.  No matter how much I know that it's false, I won't live in a world that is that overtly hateful.