The Sundance Channel: “The Visitation”

We were all pretty tired about five-hours later when we had to get back up. It felt like a hangover minus the alcohol. Standing in the doorway wondering which bad wolf was sleeping in her sister’s bed was my little grandniece, whom I had not yet met, with this very inquisitive look on her little face.

They said, “That’s your Uncle Craig.”

And I reared up out of bed and said, “Hi, honey, come see me.” She got shy and backed up and would have nothing to do with me. I guess I am quite abit to absorb on the first pass:)

I fell into whatever I had on ‘yesterday’ and made my way downstairs. We all smiled sheepishly at one another, as if to ask, “What were we thinking?”

The setup was different for this trip. My niece and nephew’s other two girls, from her first marriage, were away visiting their father. And my grandniece had been staying with Kim’s sister, because we were coming in so late.

So, that opened up two single beds for the first night. We slept at their house, but we would groom and dress at her sister’s just up the road apiece. We headed out to go and get ready at her sisters, while they got themselves and their daughter ready.

We told them we would see them at the funeral home. At Kim’s sister’s place, her other sister and her daughter (my other niece) had driven up for the day for the visitation, so we all rode into town together and visited along the way.

The Texas heat followed us all the way to PA – it was miserable hot up there the first couple of days. Her sister’s place had one window a/c and a couple of fans, so you’d take a shower and be covered in sweat again before you could get your clothes on.

You know that feeling you get when you get ‘the hair sweats’? You’re trying to dry your hair fast and furiously, but it’s like someone has a garden hose pouring water over you as you try to dry it.

I’d have to do a little and then go get a chair and park it front of the window a/c until I could cool down and try it again – and again – and again. I had brought a suit to wear, but it was so hot, that I scaled the coat and tie back and just went with the shirt, shoes and slacks.

So, we pull up to the funeral home. I remember this place. Just down the block is the church that Kim and I got married at. A lot of light bulbs began going off in my head, as I found myself connecting the dots and realizing that a portion of my life was spent here and that there were memories on many corners and throughout this tiny burg.

It’s a weird feeling to find yourself transported back in time standing smack dab in the middle of some of your old stomping grounds of days gone by.

It was a time when I was younger and trying to finagle my way towards adulthood, while pretending that I already knew the way. It was a time then when the whole world was all out in front of me – in front of the both of us.

It was certainly a time before the specter of cancer appeared in our lives.

Once we get inside, the outside world closes off around you. This place has not changed one iota – everything is still in its same place, just the way that I remember it…down to the last detail.

This funeral home is very old and not very modern – another haunting landmark locked in a time of yesteryear, unable to move itself forward from that, which it has always known. The last time I had stepped foot into this building was when we buried Kim’s mom. That one was very hard.

The whole thing was in such stark contrast to what we had just gone through with my father’s services, funeral and burial.

One of the most marked differences is how they do the Visitation in Pennsylvania. They are done in two-hour stints, twice a day. The afternoon visit was from 2pm-4pm. And the night visitation would be 7pm-9pm.

When we did Kim’s mom, we did that, but over two days, so it was four visitations and very exhausting – both physically and emotionally.

But, that’s the way that they do things up there. I contemplated why this was during my down time in between pleasantries with the locals. The best that I can come up with is that this is “Small Town America.”

Sort of like the TV show, “Cheers” – where everybody knows your name…

Most of the folks grew up together and never moved away, so they have all known each others their entire lives. Word of mouth spreads quickly up there and people come from all around to pay their respects. It is very refreshing in a lot of ways.

I think what it says to me, is that this person was a member of the community – and someone who folks thought enough of, to take time out of their lives to come see the decedent and their family.

As opposed to the cesspool where I live, where nobody knows you – and more to the point, nobody wants to know you. I’d wager if I put a sign out front of the funeral home I was laid out at, advertising “Mourners Needed – Will Pay $100”…I probably wouldn’t get one single taker.

It made me think long and deeply about the sad life that I live here in my native state. At 51-years of age, I wake up each day and realize with clarity now, that I have nobody here in my life, but my wife now.

I find that we really don’t have anyone here to really count on when you need some help or even just a ride – nobody to come by and watch a game – nobody to come over for a cookout – nobody to plan a meaningful holiday with.

Just nobody here…for all real practical purposes in a day-to-day situation.

I’ve got both sets of aunts and uncles left, but they are not going to be a nail that you can hang your hat on. We see them when we can and visit and talk and stuff like go out to eat.

But, it’s a handful of times at best….one set is really out of town and you can’t visit them because they closed their house down to one bedroom to save on a/c. I haven’t been allowed to step foot in their place since about 1992. And they wouldn’t think about coming up to see us, except for a funeral or perhaps a surgery.

The other set runs a more clandestine operation during the holiday time and they cordon off their time to be with their nuclear family – and don’t want any outside family getting in the way of that - I get that, I guess.

It’s just lonely for us as a result.

Often, I think of my other uncle, who was murdered…and of course, my thoughts drift back to my sister, who was also murdered….they were my family in a previous life, but I’ve never been able to fill up the hole in my heart from their departure from this earth.

Try as I must...and I can’t. I never will be able to do so. They were special – they loved me unconditionally – and bad forces took them both out of my life and that of other members of my family as well.

Family is more than swimming around in the same gene pool. One can have family and still be lonely. I told my niece and nephew that all family really is, are splashes of protoplasm that come together on a hot, sultry night.

Real meaning comes from liking that person and feeling a comfort with them and most importantly, “wanting” to be around them and be together for the sheer sake of wanting to spend time with them.

It really got me to thinking about things…

A lifetime I’ve dedicated to the great state of Texas and what would I have to show for it on the day that my time came? It was a sobering realization that my life has obviously not been well spent here – to have meant so little to anyone.

I’ve often told Kim; don’t waste the time or money on a funeral for me – just wrap me up in a XXL Hefty Bag and toss me in the hole and call it a day.

It makes sense to me really – if nobody was seeing you when you were alive, why throw a party for the few people that would show up out of pity?

I don’t want to die here alone, but we’ll talk about this in the last installment of the story.

So, it all started coming back to me in living color, as they say.

This funeral home, as I said, is very old and very small. The caskets still sit in the same place – you enter the room at one end and make your way along the procession and either exit out the door when finished, or you take a seat to visit with the other mourners – or like most of the flock up there, they go downstairs to the basement or head outside and huff and puff their brains out.

I mean, that’s all these folks do – is smoke. The smoking laws haven’t made their way that far up north yet, it seems. Even the restaurants are smoked up and their private membership clubs too.

At $6 a pack and with a depressed economy and an even more locally depressed condition where they live, the cigs are flying off the shelves – and even out of the machines.

That’s right, machines! I had to do a double take myself. I saw an actual cigarette machine in one of the family clubs! I haven’t seen one of those in over 30-years! Wow, talk about a flashback. Not exactly a recipe for health with someone like me, who’s had two major lung surgeries, only to find that every public facility is bathed in smoke.

There was a guy on my nephew’s softball team, that whenever he got to 3rd base, he had to have his wife throw him a cigarette and a lighter – during the game!

Anyway, I just sort of blended in with the furniture and took up my observation post and just begin to watch the action – the players – the drama – and the inevitable politics and posturing that funerals often time bring out in folks.

Lots of faces from the past were in attendance. I spoke to several folks that I have not seen since another lifetime and it was very cordial. To a large degree though, I found the ones that were supposed to be the closest – were the most distant.

You might say that the folks were pre-occupied with the deceased at hand. I might buy that had I not been standing in the same room with them. Because, there were not a lot of tears – just a lot folks using the occasion to huck and shuck one another and be all friendly like. I saw the smiles – and heard the laughter.

So, that wasn’t the reason…

They knew I was there, I was just not enough of a motivating factor to warrant the capturing of their attention at that moment. I think the reason was just pure old apathy. It made no real difference whether I had showed or not – contrary to Kim’s original assessment.

I made eye contact with several ‘family members’ and there was nary a recognition among any of them. I’d been gone awhile, but I still recognized them and I know they still knew me too.

I even chased one of ‘em down…she acted like she didn’t know me and tried to avoid me, but I had cut off her escape route. And then she pretended to be glad to see me and thanks for coming and all of that. Good gracious.

Still, I played it like Cool Hand Luke and handled it all with aplomb and eventually got around to all of them and paid my respects, but it left me feeling lukewarm and not too anxious about coming back for more at the second visitation later on that evening.

I think that more than anything, this scene told me what I already knew in my heart. That the faces staring back at me were nothing more than the faces from my past, that echoed hauntingly with that faint hint of familiarity, which somehow connected my brain to memories of a time long ago forgotten - buried deep out of sight and out of my mind.

I tried to reach out across the vastness that had separated our lives the past twelve-years and tried to walk back over the bridges that we had all previously built together.

I walked away feeling a little more empty inside than when I arrived as I realized that these relationships were never really going to be relevant or meaningful in my life, whether I lived there or stayed where I was – it appears they were not then – and they are not now.

These relationships are all “on the surface” and when you scratch down past the initial layer to get to the filling, you are merely left with empty calories, instead of an appetizing snack.

It’s funny to me, that as much as we like to believe that some things can change, we find out that things pretty much stay the same. I mean it was good to see them after all of this time, I just knew that there was no longing on their part, whether I was a part of their lives or not.

Twelve years, a killer tornado and three cancers have done little to diminish their ambivalence towards me and I reckon if that doesn’t do it – then what on this earth would?

I didn’t expect a ticker-tape parade or anything – but some genuine sincerity and warmth would have been nice from some of those that I was supposedly close to – even with temperatures outside at 100 degrees, I could still feel the cool chill of the breeze as some of them sped by.

I came back with an open mind and heart and was prepared for whichever the way the wind decided to blow. I was just going to be friendly and gauge their reactions from there. I just took my cues from them.

And their actions told me all that I needed to know…

As always, I just made the best of it – and I did not get my hopes up too much – so, that I wouldn’t be let down too far. That always seems to work for me.

Unfortunately, many of the elders that I met early on have now passed away. As always, when the matriarchs begin to fall away – the House of Family begins to teeter upon the very foundation, from which it was built upon.

The crumbling and decay of the family structure on which those events and memories took place, have suddenly vanished and are gone and we find that the landscape has become forever altered in its wake.

Those that remain desperately try and hold onto tradition and fill the void – and then we find that you can never really go home as they say. Over time, the gap widens and the family segues back off into its nuclear family structure and re-forms its own entity.

And by doing so, we lose those additional layers of normality that brought structure to a gathering or a common place where all would meet. That’s why relationships are so special and can’t be replaced or even substituted.

Once they are gone – only the memories remain…..

So, the first wave of Visitation ended and the immediate family I was with went for a bite to eat, before having to return for the second visitation in the evening.

When we got back, the crowd was a little different. Many folks showed up and the majority of these faces I did not recognize. I took up a spot in the main room and sat down in a chair. I nodded and acknowledged those who past me and just watched the ritualistic dance that folks do during times like this.

My cell service came back on in town, so I checked into the board to see how things were faring. And then I mingled back through and ran into some other cousins of Kim’s and we caught up with them.

And then, this was all over and the directors were rustling the stragglers out of the building for the night. Me, Kim, her sister, niece and nephew, and their girl left and headed to Walmart to pick up a couple of things and then headed back to their house.

My nephew and I headed out to his garage to hang out. His fiancée quickly joined us outside. And one of my cuzn’s that I like very much, decided he wanted to come be where the action was and the drama wasn’t, so he showed up to. It had been a long time since I had talked to him. So, we just talked and laughed about a lot of things. I told a few stories, of course, lol.

Turns out that I had all the family I really needed right there with that group…

This was to be the earliest night that we went to bed…we gave up about 12:45am. The funeral was going to be at 11am and everybody would be scrambling that next morning trying to get ready.

Funerals are never an easy time – and they never go as you thought they would.- you never feel what you think you will. At the heart of every funeral, are the memories of the love one who has passed and the memories that were exchanged between you.

This is counter-balanced by the inevitably of the chosen path, which we all must walk down one day, against the thoughts of what our life will have been – or what it will have meant to someone else, as the statistics of our lives are being read to the congregation in attendance.

In the end, a funeral is a time for reflection about the person that you are honoring, as well as a time for reflection on where we are in life – and how many more miles we will travel, before our own ride comes to a stop.

They always make me think about how I will be remembered – and if anything I might ever do, would have any lasting impact on another person’s life.

-Craig


Next Episode: “The Funeral”

We come together to pay our last respects and along the way, we find ourselves driving back down memory lane – seeing and remembering the sights and places of a time gone by, that remain indelibly etched in our brain – the way they were then – and the way we find them now.