Fortunatus S. Marchbanks' Quotidian Minutiae

I went to a funeral
And Lord, it made me happy,
Seein’ all those people
That I ain’t seen
Since the last time somebody died.

A week ago tomorrow Mother announced that we had to do something soon about JP’s memorial service/funeral/whatever we were gonna do, because it’s been almost five weeks since he died and time was getting away from us.  By Tuesday we had decided to have the service today, and everyone was subjected to a great flurry of email from Mother all week as she made the arrangements, fretting and worrying that she was going to do something wrong and offend everyone, or forget something essential.  (She didn’t forget anything and it all went fine.)  We chose to have a graveside service only, burying part of JP’s ashes at the foot of Dad’s grave (after more than fifty years, the family plot is getting crowded) and reserving the rest to scatter in the Gulf, as he’d wanted.  The ECW had lunch for the family at the parish hall, and a reception thingy after the service with coffee and sweets for anyone who wanted to come back and visit.

We left Austin for Comanche between seven and eight, and drove from Austin to Lampasas in rain that ranged from spray-and-spit to cow-on-a-flat-rock pissing down.  Fortunately, the rain let up at about Lometa and by lunchtime, the sky had cleared and a HUGE wind came up out of the west.  (More about the wind later.)  We were first to arrive, at ten; Dad’s cousin Hayne, whom no one had expected to show up, or had even heard from in forever, arrived from Fort Worth about half an hour later, and C and his partner B showed up from Hurst about eleven, followed by my aunt and her son (my youngest first cousin), who’d driven down from Dallas.  Everyone met at the library, since (1) everyone knows where it is and it’s only a couple of blocks from the church–not that you can be very far from anything in a town that’s only thirty blocks end-to-end, and (2) Mother, being library director, had gone in to work that morning.  C, under B’s influence, had bowed to custom enough to put on a white shirt and tie.  This was a MAjor concession; C worked for IBM back in the days when all their employees had to wear white shirts and ties, and in reaction he now won’t have anything to do with either.

We all stood around and visited in the lobby for a bit, while M conned first one and then another of us into reading to her out of the Easy books, until it was time to go up to the church for lunch (chicken tetrazzini, green salad, rolls and pastry).  After lunch, M and I went out and walked around and through the prayer garden that adjoins the church.  M picked up a couple of dozen pecans; the trees up there made a lot better crop than mine did.  (I’m going to try planting some of them, so see if I can get a replacement for the San Saba and the black walnut going, so it won’t hurt so bad when I finally have to cut them down.)  The garden has a low stone wall around it, and M had a fine time walking along it, several times round as I walked with her—not that I needed to very much, but it makes me feel more secure to do that.

Thirty-some people came to the cemetery.  I think T and M were the only ones there younger than forty; a couple of JP’s classmates, much gone to seed, showed up, but nearly everyone else ranged in age from late fifties to early eighties.  In the thirty years I’ve been gone from Comanche, everyone went and got old on me.  Two or three of them even talked of remembering me at the library in the days when it was in the courthouse basement (before 1970).  M’s almost old enough to begin reading; she can recognize her own name, so she and T walked around the plot until the service began, and M was delighted to find her name spelled out on my aunt’s and great-grandmother’s gravestones.  (M is named for her aunt, who was named for my great-grandmother; we recycle names like that a lot.)  T tried a bit to explain to her that the people in the graves here were all related to her, but I don’t think that registers very much when you’re not-quite-five.

The huge west wind kept blowing; fortunately the sun was out and bright by this time, so it wasn’t miserably cold, only chilly in the shade of the funeral-home tent.  The wind almost took down the tent several times; three or four people took turns holding up the poles to keep it from collapsing on everyone.  I intended to be one of them—being “on display” in the front-row chairs with the rest of the family didn’t appeal—but when the priest called for the family members to come down front, B came back, took my place, and shooed me up to a seat in front between C and L.

St. Matthew’s vicar, who did the service, should be thrown back.  He is in no way a keeper.  He’s inarticulate when it comes to extempore prayer, has no sense of rhetoric, and if he didn’t flunk homiletics in seminary, he should have.  He did no more than go through the motions, and it showed.  He never even mentioned JP’s name, save the one time required in the order of service.  It’s been a while since I was outright disgusted by a religious service or the person conducting it, but this guy managed to do it. 

Not that many people came back to the parish hall afterward, maybe fifteen, but it did give us a chance to visit with a few we’d missed, including Dad’s second wife, who showed up with her son from her first marriage, a great friend of C’s and Mother’s, and who’s done a bunch for her one time and another.  There were also one or two I could personally have done without, including one of JP’s gone-to-seed classmates who considered herself one of his great friends (JP had rather dropped her, and I know why), and one “WTF?”, a quite elderly woman whom none of us could place, and who seemed to have come to the parish hall for the nosh as much as anything else.  As far as any of us could make out, she has some sort of connection to the Cunninghams, on Mother’s side of the family.  Maybe Mother knows who she is.

One thing I got today, that I hadn’t known about, was a copy of an editorial column from the Comanche newspaper back in 1992, when Mother’s mother died.  She and the editor were dear friends, and Mary wrote an appreciation of Gramma’s influence in her life.  I may post it here in a day or so.  Or I may not; no one on here knew my grandmother, so it might not mean much to anyone but me.

C and I have agreed I’m going to go to Arlington the third weekend of February and we’ll do whatever we’re going to do about clearing out JP’s apartment and storage unit.  From what he says, I’ll have to rent a truck to bring back furniture, some of which T wants for her projected move-out to her own apartment next school year.

Those who have to know do know, for right now.  C and I met in Dublin, then went on to Comanche together to break the news.  Not that Mother was surprised when we showed up at the library.  She’d had an overnight bag packed for days against having to go to Arlington on no notice.

Arrangements for the body were easily done; C had already been in touch with the co-owner of the funeral home the family’s used for years.  We sat down with him and settled everything there was to settle in half an hour.  Pete, the funeral home owner, told us “What we normally do with cremations is to send the body to a firm in Fort Worth that does the actual cremation, but since JP’s already in the Fort Worth morgue and there won’t be a service, there’s no point in bringing him to Comanche only to send him right back to Fort Worth.  We’ll arrange it so the crematory can go pick up the body directly from the morgue, and they can mail the ashes to you once they’re done.”  I knew, but had forgotten, that human ashes are often sent by mail to whoever’s to get them.  Pete went on to say that the funeral home usually charged $1,250 for a cremation, but since there wouldn’t be any actual effort or expense to him in this case beyond making some phone calls, he would only charge us five hundred dollars—his actual cost—plus a couple of administrative fees.  The total contract still came out to less than six hundred dollars.  Pete said when his partner finally saw the contract he’d no doubt piss and moan about how were they supposed to make any money if Pete went around making cut-rate deals like that, but he, personally, couldn’t justify charging us $750 for making two or three phone calls and faxing a couple of documents.  That kind of behavior is one reason C has a great respect for Pete.  I also think it doesn’t hurt, as I mentioned later in passing, that Comanche Funeral Home has had the burying of our families all the way back to my great-grandfather in 1952, and they just might have done my other great-grandfather in 1947 and my great-grandmother in 1936, now I come to think of it.  Mother kept going on about how quickly everything was arranged, while she was in something of a whirl, but C had already talked so much with Pete that there was little left to do yesterday save sign documents to arrange for the cremation, which C did as executor.

C’s already arranged with JP’s apartment management to secure his apartment, and he’ll go on and pay the January rent to give us more time to deal with whatever mess there may be.  After the new year he and I will have to set a time to go to Arlington, go through the apartment (and the storage unit, if there’s anything still in it—JP may have sold a bunch of the household furnishings that he’d brought back from Florida for living money), and figure what’s going where.  C says JP left one of Dad’s antique clocks to T, along with an issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book—which I rather doubt T will much want; she’s a lot too butch for that.  He also left me all the family photo albums he had.  An earlier version of his will he left with me specified the proceeds of his estate were to go to AMFAR or some other AIDS research organization.  I don’t know whether he kept that provision in the latest will, although I rather expect so.  I want to get T to go along and help whenever we do what we do.  C, if I know him, is likely to get impatient in his usual ADD-ish way and throw up his hands, in which case having T along for backup could be a big help.  Mother agreed to adopt JP’s cat, which they were going to pick up from the animal shelter in the next day or two; C had warned the shelter to wait for instructions.

I agreed to write the obituary, which will be a little bit of a chore, picking out what to tell and what not, not to mention how to tell what gets told.  The ME’s official cause of death is “complications of AIDS,” although the family all bloody well know better, but we agreed that for the obit I’d work the old “after a long illness” wheeze.  I also agreed to take care of calling the more-distant family members who need to be told, although Mother and I agreed today that job can wait until after Christmas.  JP’s not going to be any less dead then, and since whatever memorial service we have will certainly be no sooner than January, and probably not that soon, there’s no point in turning everyone’s Christmas upside down.

Thirty-six years ago tomorrow, my cousin killed himself in a New Orleans motel room.  He couldn’t live with denying what he was, and he couldn’t live with his father telling him that he was dead, so far as the family was concerned.  The New Orleans police called my father to come identify him and claim his body, because Dad was the only relative they could trace.

Eleven years ago on December 9th, my grandmother died of complications from a broken hip, old age, and grief from burying two of her three children.

Ten years ago on December 8th, my father died of a stroke brought on in part by years of drink.

This afternoon I got a call at work from the Round Rock police department.  Would I please call my brother at {number}, there was a family emergency.  The operator thought it was that Mother’s brother had died.  I said, no, it couldn’t be that because Mother was an only child, but I knew who it was likely to be.

When I called back, my brother C answered the phone.  His answer to my first question proved my gloomy suspicion to be right.  Our brother JP was the one who is dead.

JP never got over his husband’s death eighteen months ago.  He was unable to find a job after he moved back to Texas in the fall of 2004, and almost all the money he’d realized from selling their house in Florida and his share of the money from Dad’s farm was gone.  Although none of us can prove it, everyone in the family strongly suspected he’d started drinking heavily again, and he may or may not have been abusing his psych meds (or perhaps just forgetting to take them altogether).  He refused to do anything about getting any professional help, swore he wasn’t drinking, and generally acted like our family members tend to act in these situations.

C is completely distracted, to the point that he was gabbling like a crankhead (something he’s prone to do when upset).  He’s been fending off Mother, who’s been in a tizzy for several days now because nobody had heard from JP since last Friday and hadn’t been able to raise him on the phone or in email.  C said that while he was dealing with the Arlington police, who didn’t want to hear from him OR from Mother because both of them have been pestering to the point of obnoxiousness about not hearing from JP, and with finding out where the body’s gone (to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office, because it’s a mysterious death and JP had no primary care physician, so there must be an autopsy), he was telling Mother an elaborate set of lies to keep her from rushing up there in a storm and making matters more difficult.

The ugly part comes tomorrow when C and I have to go together to tell Mother that JP is dead.  He’s leaving from Fort Worth and I’m driving up from Austin.  To keep from setting off too many alarm bells in Comanche before we’re ready, we’re meeting in Dublin and going on together from there.

I told C that I’d deal with the coroner if he liked, and asked what else he wanted me to tend to, since it sounds as though he’s had to tend to much more than enough so far.  I don’t know what he’ll decide he wants to unload.  We can talk that over in the next day or so.  JP left some kind of will, but it may be a mess, because it left everything to his late husband and he never revised it.  At least we won’t have to deal with a full-bore funeral across Christmas as we did with my cousin, as JP wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico.  With luck we can stave off having any kind of memorial service until after the new year.

I ask for your energy and prayers; we’re going to need lots in the next few days.

JPW
12 November 1963 – 21 December 2005