Tiny Grass

I attended a funeral today, my great-aunt’s. I woke up and prepared for another burial, putting on my “funeral face”. The day ended up surprising me - not what I imagined when I rushed out this morning.

I haven’t been to my father’s grave since the last burial there. I think it was 5 years ago. Actually, now that I think about it, I actually declined the invitation to walk over to his grave during that visit. It’s been almost 20 years since my father died, and I’ve only seen his grave 2 or 3 times, even though it’s less than 2 hours from my home. In fact, I used to work in the same borough as the cemetery is located. But still, I avoided going there. Losing your father is hard enough. Facing his burial spot was always too much for me. Yesterday I saw my father’s grave for the first time in about 10 or 15 years. I didn’t dwell too long, but I made sure that I faced it head on. And I survived. Driving out of the cemetery after the funeral, I realized that the location of the grave is just over a small hill from a highway that I used to drive on daily. I could have probably almost seen the trees by the grave from the car. Strange. I worked so hard to stay away from that place, and yet it was closer than I realized.

At lunch, after the funeral, we all sat around the table reminiscing - my mother, my two sisters, my Godfather, my great uncle, and my grandmother. After a funeral, laughter can be a relief. Someone said something hysterical and we all broke out laughing. But the laughter stopped when my Godfather shouted out, towards my little sister, “Wait!! What was the noise you just made?!” We all turned to look, and my mouth fell open in recognition. “The laugh,” I said. Everyone at the table nodded, and we all understood without having to say a word. My sister had made this little “he he” type of scratchy laugh in the exact same way that my father used to laugh. It’s funny, because she always makes this sound. But I never really put it together how much see sounds like my father did until that exact minute.

When I was dating my husband, Arp, we got very drunk one night and I told him that I was part Irish.  It was a lie.  I was drunk, and he has always been some kind of fan of the Irish people.  He loves his Guinness, and I am a redhead.  Later on, I told him the truth.  Now it’s a sort of a joke between us.  When ever we come upon Irish folk, or Irish anything, I talk about “my people” and we have a good laugh.  Yesterday, I found out that what I had told my husband wasn’t a lie after all.  We were talking about the family tree at lunch, and it turns out that I have ancestors of both Irish and Scottish descent.  So when I got home, the first thing I told my husband was that, in fact, I am Irish and Scottish.  That’ll teach him to call me on a drunken lie!  Sometimes your best lie turns out to be the truth.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.