"Stanford Generational Story" by William O'Donnell

Movies get many things right: sadness, humor, anger, all sorts of things, but not funerals. You can probably imagine it, too. The sky is painted gray, trees are stripped bare of their leaves, left like gnarled hands curling to the sky, ignorant to the rain pouring down around them. A huddled crowd of mourners in black gather around a coffin hoisted above a six-foot hole like crows around carrion. A grim scene, for sure, and Hollywood can be forgiven for depicting it as such, after all, they have to tell the audience how to feel. On the way to my Grandmother’s funeral, I found myself wishing someone would do the same for me.

My mom handed me a sweater that I knew would have me trying to scrape off my skin, “Can you put this on please?” she asked, “fine,” I snapped back irritably. It had been like this for most of the ride; my parents would say something, and I would give the bare minimum in response, ‘Why can’t they just leave me be?’ repeated in my head like a broken record.

By the time we got out of the car, my thoughts had shifted, and I was wondering how this was supposed to go. The cold air stung my lungs as we unloaded the car, my mom was definitely right: I was not dressed for the weather. The winter sky was dreary and gray, ‘already halfway there’ I thought, tucking a mini-projector box under my arm. I turned around, and my eyes lingered for a second, ‘is that a… restaurant?’ I puzzled, thinking that maybe we had taken a wrong turn, or we were going to some sort of secret underground funeral bunker beneath.

My mom and dad strode nonchalantly toward the door like nothing was out of the ordinary, so I followed behind, shivering eager to get out of the December weather. Crossing the threshold, I realized we had been there before in the summer… with Grammy. I set that thought aside.

My family had rented a private room in the back of the restaurant, not that it mattered since the whole place was closed. “Grammy was friends with the owners,” my dad had explained, which I should have guessed: she knew just about everybody in town. The walls were cream-colored, with matching carpets, and the whole room was warmly lit by wall lamps and miniature chandeliers. There was a bar in one corner, and on the opposite wall, a little shrine had been set up for Grammy. Two tables, both covered in photos of Grammy with me, my dad, my uncle, my aunt, and my Grandpa Joe. I wondered to myself, ‘Can someone’s life really be summed up in the space of two tabletops?’

I watched as people trickled in through the doors, first two, then ten, then twenty until the empty, warmly lit room was packed full of people. At first, I talked only with the people I knew, but then my family members started introducing me to those I didn’t, and before I knew it, I was having fun. None of the people at this funeral were moving husks or heartbroken, decrepit mourners; they were people who loved each other, and being in each other’s company, so much that they didn’t weep or moan, they laughed, smiled, and hugged. The atmosphere was almost frantic, and even though no one went any faster than a brisk walk, it felt like people were rocketing from place to place, like firecrackers in a broom closet.

Eventually, the time came for the eulogies, and after much logistical hemming and hawing (and about four sodas on my part) we managed to rein in the energy and get people in their seats. My aunt Katie began,

“I want to start by telling the story of how my mom met my dad,” she stopped for a moment; her eyes were wet, and her voice was faint, but she continued, “she was in a bar in the Bronx, with some friends of hers, all of whom were flirting with some guy or another, and my mom happened to catch my dad’s eye. He talked with her for a while and asked for her number, and she figured, ‘Well if all my friends are doing it, why can’t I?’ but when he asked her for a kiss goodnight, she refused, trying to be a good catholic girl, and she went out to the car to wait for her friends. Sitting there, alone, in that car, she realized, ‘this one might be special,’ and she went back into the bar and said, ‘I think I might want that kiss goodnight.’ They went on a date the next weekend, one date turned into two, two into three, and the rest is history.”

After the eulogies, I lingered in my seat a while longer. I felt a fly land on my hand and swatted it away. I noticed that the projector I had brought was playing something: a slideshow. Images from Grammy's life, some I had seen and others I hadn’t. Familiar faces flashed across the screen. Together, they formed a visual tapestry of fleeting memories surrounded by a tapestry of people, all of us just as temporary and fleeting as the memories. But while the memories and the people may have been fleeting, the tapestry they had woven themselves into, with the help of Grammy, was not.