Many thanks to SolemnDragon for inspiring me to finish this JE and post it. I've been dabbling with it for over a year now (the events occured September 2002), but now seems a good time to post it.
My mother-in-law occasionally uses the expression "so stupid they'd screw up a 2-car funeral," a quaint phrase that elicits a chuckle at both the absurdity of the scenario and the applicability to the subject in question. That phrase kept repeating in my head as I drove a rental car from Boca Raton to Miami with my dad beside me, and one brother (the younger of my two older brothers, so we'll call him YB) in the back seat. We were heading to the airport, along with my oldest brother (OB) and mom in another rental car, talking on cell phones trying to figure out where we could stop along the way to have a family dinner together before OB had to catch a flight.
My grandmother had just died, and that weekend our family came together. My parents had driven down from Connecticut several days in advance, when Nana went into the hospital and her kidneys began shutting down. She had long ago decided against fighting tooth and nail medically in such a circumstance, so my parents stayed with her and by the time I got there, she was gone.
I had brought my pregnant wife and 6 month-old twins down from Indianapolis, while at work we were heading into a go-live weekend for a major ERP modification project in which I was serving as the technical lead. My employer was understanding, and our project manager came to Indy from Wisconsin to take my place for the go-live. My wife thought it important for all of us to come down, given the gravity of the situation and the fact that as a complete family, we hadn't gotten together more than once every few years. I agreed.
OB had jetted down from Chicago Saturday morning, but could only stay about 10 hours before he had a flight out to catch up with his vacationing family. As the outstandingly capable over-achiever in the family, he had been granted power of attorney by Nana, so he had some legal documents to sign while he was in town. All day you could tell he had a ticker in his head counting down to when he had to bolt for the airport.
YB had flown in from his home in Pennsylvania (without wife or kids), and was obviously perturbed with the way things were proceeding. Perturbed at Nana for hiding so much from us throughout her life, and with the way our mom was coping with the whole situation.
Nana raised my mom and uncle by herself back in the 1940's, way before Murphy Brown made single parenthood respectable, and she had been less than forthcoming about her background and life story. To us grandkids, she always said she was "99 years old", and had grown up in Kentucky. Her parents and siblings had been killed in a car/train accident, and although she came from a family of means, an attorney basically took most everything after the wreck. She had attended the University of Louisville but left a year short of getting her degree, and a flood had supposedly wiped out the records from back then. She moved to Detroit from there, married, and had my mom and Uncle Joe, eventually divorcing because her husband was abusive. Over the last 20 years or so some of these "facts" were called into question, and Nana always said that "the truth" was all written down in an envelope, which we could have after her death. She wouldn't respond to any other questions regarding those subjects.
Uncle Joe disappeared in the mid-70's. He called my dad one day, met with him for a few minutes, said he had to go, and was never seen nor heard from again.
That's a pretty mixed-up scenario for my mom to deal with - raised only by her mother, her brother gone for 30 years, and slowly discovering over the course of time that Nana wasn't always truthful about her past. For one thing, there had been rumors (heard from a friend of Nana's) that there had been a previous marriage (she was 32 when my mom was born, so that's not unreasonable), and that her "maiden" name wasn't really what she said it was. BTW, her pseudo-maiden name is my middle name, so this kind of stuff tends to drop down through the family tree. Through some research I did after her death (and a 2-week trial period at Ancestry.com), I found some documents that appeared to validate our suspicions - birth certificates, census data, etc. that pointed to a different maiden name but jived with the rest of her tale.
Mom's method of dealing with all this was to basically paralyze herself with doubt. Rather than actually inquiring into the truth, she would wring her hands and muse about different possibilities, such as other aspects of her past that might be called into question. All that emotion came bubbling up that weekend in Florida. After her mother's death, she seemed incapable of even the most basic tasks which someone must do in that situation.
There was no funeral, or memorial service. There was a senior center that Nana went to several times a week to play bingo, and my mom had my dad send a cake over there, but that was it. Despite the decades that Nana spent in Detroit (including a long career at a nursing school teaching medical terminology), my mom refused to put an obituary in the paper.
Needless to say, my brothers and I are products of our parents, in more ways than one. During that day when we were all together, we went to her apartment, gathered some things together, split up some afghans she had knitted for the grandkids, and then my dad proposed getting a bite somewhere as a family. My wife called me on the cell, and the phone conversation went something like this:
Wife: "So what's the plan? Is there going to be a memorial, or anything? I've got two babies here and I'm starving! When are you coming to pick us up?"
Me: "Beats me, we have to get these documents signed, and then OB has to head to the airport later, I really don't think anything's going to take place."
Wife: "That's ridiculous."
Me: "It's wierd, is what it is. I wish I had my own car, I'd come get you. But as soon as I know more, I'll let you know..."
OB was focused on getting the papers signed and catching his plane, while YB seemed bitter and angry at the destitute condition of Nana's apartment and my mom's inaction in the wake of her death. He clearly wanted to get out of town ASAP. Mom was busy occupying herself with a variety of minutiae, keeping an air of calm as we went to the Post Office, got the documentation taken care of, and then considered what to do as a group.
Me: "Um, what about my Wife and kids at the hotel? Are we doing anything together?"
OB: "I don't think we have time - let's find some place on the way to the Miami airport."
Me: "Ugh."
The Wife was obviously upset at this development - she had flown with the kids down to Florida for this, and my family was just ditching her at the hotel all day long. We got onto the highway headed south, right into a huge traffic snarl on the way to Miami airport. As we crawled along, there were no obvious spots to stop, and with the traffic posing an obstacle, it was decided to get into the airport and find someplace there. Our two cars parked seperately, so what followed was the pathetic spectacle of my dad and I following YB through the airport, while he's talking to OB, looking for a place for us to meet.
YB: "I've got a Burger King over here... A Cinnibon... damn, it's all so busy right now."
At this point, I needed to pinch myself to see if this were truly happening, or whether I was just along for the ride in a bad movie. Everyone was so bound up in the details of finding a place to eat, that the purpose of our being together had been lost completely.
Finally, we ended up at a Cuban cafeteria (odd fare for a bunch of pasty Midwesterners); we went through the line, snagged the last open table in the place, and sat down together before OB had to leave in 5 minutes to catch his flight. There was an awkward silence once we were all around the table, and like clockwork, my outstandingly capable over-achieving OB stepped to the fore:
OB: "Um... so, did you guys here I'm playing softball again?"
Mom: "Oh really? How's your shoulder?"
YB: "What, you're playing with some of the guys from work?"
I almost burst out loud laughing at the pathetic spectacle. Instead, I butted in with, "by the way, did anyone find The Envelope? Was there anything written down?"
Everyone stopped blathering, my mom looked down, and softly said no, nothing had been found. Once the bubble had been burst, we actually had about 3 genuine minutes of conversation about Nana, before OB headed off for his flight. YB didn't participate much, but my parents opened up a little bit at least, telling us about her final hours.
I finally got back to the hotel to share the tale with my wife and sister-in-law, who were still dumbfounded at the lack of any recognition of Nana's passing. My wife's sister was living in St. Pete at the time and she drove over to help her with the kids and get some pizza.
Once back in Indiana, I found that even Nana's final wish hadn't been observed. She wanted her ashes spread at sea with roses. My mom (who is morbidly obese) said she couldn't get on a boat, and that my father is afraid of the open water, so they gave the ashes to "someone who has a friend with a boat" to take care of it.
Fucking despicable.
In the end, the anger that simmered inside as a result of that weekend wanted to make me think my mom deserves no better treatment once she's gone. No memorial, no obituary (I talked to my aunt who still lives in the Detroit area, and she got one placed), not even proper respect for her mother's remains.
But I'm not like that, and I'm not going to teach my kids to be like that. Things have to change.
