Limousine Farts: Part III

This is the third and final post regarding the passing of my Great-Aunt Mickey, last matriarch and "grand dame" of my family. If you haven't yet, and you'd like to, you may read Part I and/or Part II. There are two benefits, as I see it, to reading the two prior posts.

1.) It will give you some context about the woman and the circumstances surrounding her death.

2.) It will explain why I've chosen to honor an important member of my family with such a dubious-sounding blog title. Believe me, it's not just because I have no class and was raised in a family where "motherfucker" was a frequently heard coming from our dining room by people walking their dogs in the summertime.

Thanks.

----------------------------------------

Nobody looks forward to a funeral-- except for Harold and Maude.

Even I, who looks for any opportunity to dress up, don't like funerals. The first one I ever went to was when I was eight years old. I skipped my great-grandmother's husband's funeral a couple months earlier, and so, I think primarily motivated out of guilt, I attended the funeral of Dr. Porter, our elderly neighbor. It was in the summertime, and I wore a short-sleeved green and blue plaid shirt, a white knit necktie, white pants and white shoes. I must have looked like I was going to a kid's golf tournament, but my parents didn't stop me. Nobody ever stopped me from doing anything.

I've been to lots of funerals in my life. As part of the research for the book I wrote in college on law enforcement fatalities, I started attending the funerals for slain police officers. While in college, I attended funerals for police officers who got shot, and two officers in two different cases in two different cities who were accidentally killed by other officers in car crashes while responding to calls for help. I've attended police funerals and/or viewings in several states, and the total comes to probably around fifteen or so. There are lots of rituals and everybody who attends knows exactly what to expect. With few exceptions, everything is pretty much the same. Interminable bagpipes, interminable motorcades, interminable platitudes, interminable young widows crying out in vain.

I hate police funerals, but I've shown up at lots of them-- usually in one of my dark suits, once in my EMT uniform, a respectful black mourning band partially covering my badge. I've stopped wearing white pants at funerals, and anywhere else. I suppose, in a few short decades, I'll start up again.

"You know you don't have to go to Mickey's funeral," my mother advised me, "I don't even want to go."

"Ma, nobody wants to fucking go, but we go because we have to go."

And fucking go we did.

When we got to the cemetery, no one would get out of the car. There we were, my father, my mother, my oldest sister, my wife and I, sitting there like little children in the parking lot on the first day of kindergarten-- not budging-- no way. You see, there were people standing by the gravesite, and, in my family, we don't talk to people, even if we're related to them. Well, except for my father-- he talks to anybody. So, he got out, and started schmoozing. We stayed in the car for another twenty-five minutes.

Car after car came. Some people, like my uncle, stopped at our car, peered in, and waved. We waved back, but we didn't move. People who didn't know us, and whom we didn't know, just walked on by us.

Aunt Mickey had specified that this was to be a very, very small affair-- for close family only. Well, Aunt Mickey had specified a lot of things. I could recount the whole dismal happening blow by blow for you but, instead, I think I'm going to go in a different direction. See-- for police funerals, there are actual manuals that dictate exactly what is supposed to happen, when, and how, down to the most minute detail. Behavior is also strictly regulated by commanding officers.

At civilian funerals-- all bets are off. There are no rules, and, as far as I know, there are no manuals, so, after viewing Aunt Mickey's funeral and, after having had some time to digest the various displays that were on, well, display there, I decided to create a sort of manual myself, not just for my family, but for all families.

It's called Funeral Rulerals.

Ready?

Here we go:

Funeral Ruleral #1: If you were actively suing the decedent until the moment of her death, it is generally regarded as poor form to show up at said decedent's funeral.

Funeral Ruleral #2: If you were actively suing the decedent until the moment of her death, and you make the ill-advised decision to ignore Funeral Ruleral #1, it is further ill-advised that you read a long, prepared statement at said decedent's funeral.

Funeral Ruleral #3: If you were actively suing the decedent until the moment of her death, and you make the ill-advised decision to ignore Funeral Rulerals #1 & #2, it is further ill-advised that you avoid blatant, provable lies in your long, prepared statement.

Funeral Ruleral #4: Crocs are not appropriate footwear at funerals, even if you are a child, and especially if you are an overweight, elderly Jewish man.

Funeral Ruleral #5: If the decedent has specifically requested that her funeral be entirely devoid of religious iconography, themes, overtones, music, and/or prayer, you should probably leave the Hebrew at home and take that wooden Star of David off said decedent's casket.

Funeral Ruleral #6: If the decedent has clearly stated that her funeral should be for close family only, and you were employed by her in the 1980s, you should probably stay at home.

Funeral Ruleral #7: If the decedent has clearly stated that her funeral should be for close family only, and you were employed by her in the 1980s, and you have disregarded Funeral Ruleral #6, don't make it worse by speaking at the funeral-- your being there is awkward enough.

Funeral Ruleral #8: If you are observably intoxicated, please refrain from attending a funeral. Though it is prehaps acceptable and, in some instances, expected, to be drunk at an Irish wake, people are anticipated to be sober at actual funerals as a general rule. On the decorum spectrum, showing up shitfaced at a graveside service is typically regarded as pretty low. On the practical side, some cemeteries are on sloping and/or uneven ground, and you may very well fall over.

Funeral Ruleral #9: If you are observably intoxicated and choose to disregard Funeral Ruleral #8, please do not make a speech at the funeral. The only person who ever had anything interesting or coherent to say while inebriated was W. C. Fields, and he's dead.

Funeral Ruleral #10: This one is for the officiant: you're being paid to be here. Everything at a funeral is the same except, generally, for the decedent's name. Please pay special, delicate eattention and learn the decedent's fucking name. Memorize it. Write it on your hand. Make up some sort of clever mnemonic-- just learn the goddamn dead person's name.

Funeral Ruleral #11: Also for the officiant: if you fail to heed Funeral Ruleral #10, then at least do not confuse the decedent's name with the name of her daughter who, up until the moment of her death, was suing the decedent. Because that's awkward.

Limousine Farts; Part II

Remember Aunt Mickey?

Well, unless you joined the My Masonic Apron fold recently, you probably do. If you don't recall hearing her name, or remembering her name, or hearing of her limousine farts, read up.

Aunt Mickey finally died on Thursday, February 18th. "Finally died." That sounds like such a silly thing to say. Of course she finally died. We all die, finally, and, as Basil Fawlty once said about death through clenched teeth, "I'd say it was pretty bloody final."

Pretty bloody final indeed, Basil.

According to her doctors, she should have passed away somwhere around January 10th or so. "You probably won't make it through the weekend," they told her on Friday, January 8th. Well, they were wrong. Doctors sometimes are, you know.

My mother called me Thursday night at 8:43pm. My wife and I were taking a rare break from the Olympics, snuggled up together on the couch like two pretzels in a bag, watching "Julie/Julia" when the phone rang. I know I sound like a bad son when I say it, but ordinarily, when my parents call during a movie, I let it go to voicemail. But, ever since Aunt Mickey mounted her epic Dying Odyssey back in early January, every time my parents call, I pick it up. I always take a moment to summon up the strength to hear the news before I hit that little green button on my cell-phone. Strangely enough, I didn't think Thursday night was the night.

I'm going to talk a little bit about "Julie/Julia" for a minute-- I hope that doesn't make me sound like some emotionally-detached wackjob with Aspergers who doesn't comprehend the enormity of the matriarch of his family passing away. I do. But Aunt Mickey loved the entertainment industry-- and she loved movies (remember "The Hornymooners?") so I don't think she'd mind, if she were alive to mind.

I didn't like "Julie/Julia," barely at all. I think Julie Powell is incredibly narcissitic and obsessive, and not in a charming way, either-- and I don't think Amy Adams brought anything remotely affirming or sympathetic with her wooden, whiny portrayal either. I think it's very obnoxious when you have a character who is self-absorbed and a bitch, and then thinks that she's likeable because she admits to being so.

The performances of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci certainly elevate the film, and these scenes are filmed, directed, and acted with palpable affection and sumptuous detail for a bygone era, but I didn't think they were enough to save the movie, to justify its existence. I would hope that, if Julia Child had ever met Julie Powell that she would have had enough sense to smack Julie Powell upseide her head with a rolling pin-- and a rolling pin from the 1950s, not one of the cheap, crappy ones that are made today.

Then, the more I thought about it, I thought, well-- you didn't hate "Julie/Julia," you hate Julie Powell, because she's a blogger who is famous and wipes the Boeuf Bourguignon off her chin with money and you are a blogger who will never squeeze a book deal out of this bizarre cacophany you call a blog and you get Kraft Lite Ranch salad dressing on your pants with disturbing regularity.

Or maybe I didn't like "Julie/Julia" because I'll always associate it with the phone call I got at 8:43pm on Thursday night, February 18th, 2010.

Speaking of phone calls-- I didn't make mine. When we were all told that Aunt Mickey was sent home from the hospital, we, my mother's children were told that we could call her before it was too late, before she slipped into her inevitable coma and then organ failure took her away. I didn't call. Now, you know me. Well, some of you do, I think, and pretty well, too. I think you know that I'm not going to turn this blog upside-down and make of it a soapbox upon which I will stand and lecture you in my guilt about the importance of saying goodbye when faced with death-- about how you'll never get another chance to say farewell to loved ones who are slipping mercilessly away. To tell you how wracked with regret I am. To say I'm sorry to whomever's listening.

Well, you know I won't do that. Am I sorry? Oh, yes, I suppose I am. I suppose I "should" have called my Aunt Mickey, on whose freshly-waxed parquet floor I used slide in my white cotton socks, in whose Cadillac I quietly prayed we would arrive at our destination safely, at whose chic country club I feasted on countless corned beef and pastrami sandwiches. I suppose I should have called her.

But I didn't know what to say.

Isn't that funny? Me-- the man who's been blogging every single day for three hundred and seventy-seven days, who shoots his mouth off at work with reckless disregard for the consequences, who makes flip and crass comments at every family dinner, sending everyone into hysterics and head shakes, whose ruthless commentary and remarks have more than once made my mother, Aunt Mickey's little niece, remark, "You're murder," her cheeks red with embarrassed laughter.

I didn't know what to say.

And I was afraid-- of crying, of making her cry, of saying something stupid, of saying nothing at all, of wishing I hadn't called at all, of everything. Of nothing.

I didn't know what I'd say to her youngest son, who was at her bedside from the first day returning home from the hospital to the moment when she breathed her last. Her oldest son had been to Vietnam and came back completely fucked up-- but I think this must have been a thousand times worse. I didn't know what I'd say to him if he'd picked up the phone.

After I put the phone down on Thursday night, I looked at my wife, who knew already because you can hear conversations had on my cellphone if you're in the same room and I said,

"Well, that's that. It's going to be on Sunday and we'll see if we can go," and I pressed play on the DVD remote.

I was kind of alarmed at myself at how apparently callously I took the news, especially considering that, several years ago, when my mother called me to tell me that my pediatric allergist had collapsed and died suddenly of a massive heart attack, I fell into the living room rocking chair and sobbed hysterically in my wife's arms. When I think about Dr. Greene, sometimes tears still fill my eyes, to this day. Maybe it's because he was 55 and it was so shocking-- this passing was anything but. It was a goddamned shame.

"She could have been playing tennis today if she'd had that operation," said my uncle.

Well, maybe. Not for us to say, really. It was her choice, and it was her life. Her's till the end.

I read about a BBC reporter yesterday afternoon named Ray Gosling. He's an elderly man and, while filming a documentary about the right-to-die, he made a startling confession whilst walking through a graveyard on a blustery Midlands day.

"I killed someone once," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "...he was a young chap. He'd been my lover, and he got AIDS. And, in a hospital, one hot afternoon-- doctors said, 'There's nothing we can do' and he was in terrible, terrible pain. And I said to the doctor, 'Leave me, just for a bit.' And he went away, and I picked up a pillow and I smothered him until he was dead. Doctor came back. And I said, 'He's gone.' Nothing more was ever said."

Ray Gosling, 70 years old, was arrested after Nottinghamshire Police reviewed the documentary and interviewed its producers.

After watching the clip of Gosling, walking through the cemetery, his thinning white hair blowing about as he made this astonishing confession, I realized something my father had said to me back on January 9th. He told me on the phone that Aunt Mickey had told him that she wanted to die, and that she wanted him to 'help her with that.' He had said it, and I'd heard it, but it clearly didn't register that Aunt Mickey had asked my father to help her end her life. Of course, he refused, instead agreeing to arrange hospice care for her and to plan out her funeral in exact detail. Her obituary, for instance, will not be released to the newspapers until exactly two weeks after her burial. That's Aunt Mickey, pulling the strings even from beyond the grave.

Now, just like I don't want this blog post to be about guilt, I also don't want it to turn into a debate about assisted suicide. You think what you think, I think what I think, and maybe what I think will evolve over time after I've had enough experiences with life and death. Maybe yours will, too. I don't know. I just know that my Aunt Mickey's dead, and that I didn't like "Julie/Julia" and that being a blogger is very, very good for me.

Thank you.