Assignment for English (VERY VERY long)
<< 12:40 a.m. - Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002 >>
You�ve Heard it a Thousand Times

It all came down to a plane ride and a stuffy funeral home. I didn�t want to be there. All these people I did not know standing in circles talking. No one addressed the man lying in the coffin. We all avoided him. The glasses on his nose were too large. There was bright makeup that decorated his face and made him look far more alive than he ever had. My grandfather; the geranium man.

Michigan is my home � no scratch that. Michigan is my parent�s home; I was born here in Oregon. Miles away from the place I dread now. I never used to hate it. I used to live there in fact. Once upon a time when I was very young. Preschool age, I think. I adored it then. Misty images of my parents sitting on the back porch on a hot evening; clovers all over the yard. A dull radio station (NPR) in the background while I begged my mother for cookies. Lying in awake at night, worrying about monsters under my bed. Even though I hate to admit it, I am still very much tied to that place.

The trouble started early on. My parents stayed in Michigan to please their parents, had me baptized, went to church, pretended to be republicans. It just wasn�t them. The fa�ade began to deteriorate. So we moved away. A rambling 120-year-old stagecoach stop became my world. It was a fascinating building, with an old root cellar, 16-foot ceilings, and no heating. Relatives would come out and visit then, back when I was cute enough to lure them out here to see me. My grandpa never came, he was content to grow geraniums in the basement and make wine. �You stupid ass!� I wanted to say. He wouldn�t let us get close, no one. I doubt his kids knew him much better than I did.

Anger is passed down on the Herman side, and now I am infected with it. I suppose if Donald (my grandfather) had controlled his anger and been a model parent to his sons and daughter, it would have helped me as well. I am given bitter words, snide remarks, and dumb jokes about him. Who was this man? I have always wanted to know. He is gone now; the earth over his grave remains fresh, like some pulsing, aching wound.

We received the call on a Sunday. I wrote about it in my journal, but I felt no grief, not one tear of mine was shed over him. His death was expected; I had come to terms with it long ago. He had been in rotting away in a nursing home for almost 9 months. When I came to see him several months before his death, I had been the first grandchild to glimpse him. It seemed strange; after all, three of my cousins lived thirty minutes away. Why hadn�t they seen him?

I entered the plastic smelling room and understood. It was just so horrible. The man I remembered was whittled away into a piece of dry driftwood, empty and hollow. He lay there almost comatose. All the muscle he had was gone, the skin just hung off his large bones. Nose hairs were too long and he had difficulty breathing. Tubes and electronic machines surrounded him. I wanted to scream or burst into tears. The sight of him and the look my grandma gave him as she tried to wake him was too much for me. His memory was shot, his speech garbled and incoherent, his face a clay mask. Wanda (grandma) took my hand, and my face came close to his. �Who is this Donald? Do you remember this pretty girl?� He did not. I had been lost in his broken mind.

Later she took out some cardboard books, the kind for very young children. Books about colors and shapes - simple stuff. She quizzed him on it, mostly he knew it, but he had so much trouble trying to get the words out. The pneumonia he had had was still lodged in his throat, and his tongue was like a writhing worm, it followed none of his brains instructions. What was I watching? Wanda was trying so hard to hold on to him. She took her marriage vows very seriously; came in every day to visit him, and yet God did nothing.

What had happened was over. He was gone, sighing in his last breath. Such a relief to be through with it all. I was not there. I did not see him in his last hour. I sat on the couch looking outside and pictured him dead. My first death, and here I was so unprepared.

We left for Detroit two days later, cancelled all plans, borrowed money and tried to pretend we were hurting. I can�t remember what happened after that. It was as if we were hurtling through time to end up at the funeral home. We got out of the car, and stepped into the heat that radiated around the parking lot. My mom�s sister got there at the same time as we did. Her air conditioned body and her sweet perfume made me feel sick. I was not ready to enter a room with a dead person. I felt fat and uncomfortable, my clothes pinched, I did not want the faces of the ones I had seen just months before.

The doors opened, and a dry erase board stood on a tripod glaring at us. Herman, Waynes, and Brown. A menu of families, I felt like I was in a restaurant for dead people. How dare they put up this sign. I could imagine a waiter coming to the door and asking, �Well sir, our specials for tonight are Donald Herman, Robert Waynes, and Amy Brown. Anything interest you?�

A black arrow pointed toward a room on our right. We were to make our entrance, but I didn�t want to enter. I did not want to see the people who asked about �Orygon�, and made a big fuss about the fact that we �actually� were here. Where were they when we wanted to see them? I hoped to slip in silently, sit among people without saying a word. Needless to say, my hopes never solidified.

Inside the room, the talking was far too loud and jovial. There was a yellowish couch that faced the coffin and two end tables with glowing lamps. And audience of empty chairs sat behind the couch. Near the coffin stood two presentation boards with pictures of my grandfather from boyhood to old age. I found my uncle and we looked over the boards, trying hard to avoid the stiff body behind us. His pictures sent me thinking about how someone changes over time. As a youth he looked surprisingly outgoing and crazy, not the man I had come to know. Why had he changed so much? Would I?

My grandmother sat on the couch surrounded by a couple older women, but alone in a world of her own. Her face told me that she did not want people laughing. I think she would have preferred crying eyes and deep hugs. What could I say to her that wouldn�t sound trite and shallow? Nothing, I could conclude. I avoided her � sat next to my cousins who were situated as far away from the body as the chairs allowed.

I can�t recall what we talked about. At one point I followed my cousin up to the body and awkwardly watched her kneel before him and pray. I, not having been taught the �ways of the church�, felt like a total numbskull during the entire episode. I just stood there, frozen, and wondering how he had been preserved.

And suddenly after the 50 Hail Marys and the quiet goodbyes I was alone in the funeral home with my uncle picking up flowers. Grandpa was gone, and Grandma was at home. There were too many bouquets of flowers. They were all in full bloom, destined to brown and wilt by the next day. We brought them to my grandmother�s house anyways. At home we could remember again and again that he was dead. The flowers would remind us, their petals like crimson flags warning us of the inevitable. We would die too. Why do people send flowers anyway?

The inevitable happened too soon. My aunt died 10 days later, the day we left for Portland.