My Mother's Funeral

Life likes its curve balls. When I did my trip through Florida, culminating in the wonderful Key West Mystery Fest, I came home for about a week and a half, and then I heard my mother had collapsed. My little sister called with the news. I'm not sure how she found out because my other sister and my brother have made themselves the only kids that count. When my father died my wife called Isa because the other two couldn't be bothered.

I called the hospital immediately. For some damn reason they gave me to the Queen sister, who asked me three times, "How did you find out?" as though her efforts to keep the news from me had failed. When my little sister told the busybody one that I would be there in the morning--living up in northern New Hampshire makes it difficult to get anywhere quickly--she said that I didn't even need to come.

There's a lot more in that particular story, none of it reflecting well on the one sister and my brother, and my father would have rolled over in his grave. Again, as he would have done it during his first funeral, when the busybody and my brother denied my younger sister a seat with the family. How was that communicated? With choice four-letter words, of course.

My mother's funeral was two nights ago. After I flew to see her in Minneapolis, I came home after the MRI proved that her brain had been destroyed, was home for a day, then drove to Manhattan for ThrillerFest. Then I stayed an extra day for a Noir @ the Bar reading (I need to put up that poster on my website) and drove home the next day. Two days later I was headed for the Public Saftey Writers Association conference in Las Vegas. I'd been invited, appeared on three panels, and got to enjoy the constant second-hand smoke that makes up Las Vegas's breathing spaces. Right now I'm jet-lagged off my rear end but I could have flown directly from Vegas to Minneapolis for my mother's funeral.

But I didn't.

It was very difficult to get any information from my brother but as he denied or lied about everything that happened at my father's service in regards to my little sister, I decided I couldn't tacitly support their untrue version of what they had done.

People not related to anyone were seated in the family row. We had to pull up an extra chair so my wife and I could both sit. I had no idea until later that they wouldn't allow my sister a seat. Plenty of people saw it, including my wife and a very good friend from high school. At the end of it, when I had just been told, my mother tried to get us to go over to my brother's house. Shocked and appalled I told her we weren't going to do that. We seemed to have parted on good terms. I wasn't going to make a scene.

When my brother deigned to answer my e-mails, he denied any of what happened with my sister was real. I had told him that that couldn't happen again, that when the officiator read her bio that Mom had eleven grand-children, instead of the four that came from my busybody sister. I told him that all of us should sit in the family row, as it should have happened at my Dad's funeral. I told him that all of us should be allowed to speak.

He told me in no uncertain terms that none of what had happened at my Dad's funeral had actually happened, despite all the people that saw it, and that I would not be allowed to speak.

In other words, it was their way or the highway. They have done so much over the years to splinter the family. My parents moved down to Florida to be near my wife and I. My Dad taught my son to play golf. We were together every Thanksgiving. I'd drive my dad's car and he'd drive my Jeep. I helped him out in his house, crimping and connecting the cable outlets in the ceiling of his house, helping clean up after a hurricane, and so on.

Apparently my older sister and younger brother thought they knew best. They tried to make me an outcast. I didn't allow it at my father's service but they toughened up for my mother's and forced me into a choice: attend not as my mother's son but at their tolerance, or be satisfied with the goodbyes I'd said to my mother at the hospital.

They kept her plugged in for a couple of extra days so people who had gone on vacation for the Fourth could come back. They left after my Mom had collapsed and went anyway. When they finally unplugged her, they didn't make the effort to even let me know.

When I was younger, I rode my bike to the hospital where my dad's mother was dying of lung cancer. I remember going into this big empty room expecting to spend some nice time with my grandmother--I used to drop by on her and her husband at random times at their house--and was shocked when she couldn't kick me out of there fast enough. "I don't want anyone to see me like this!" she said.

I don't believe my mother would have like to have been kept alive artificially so people could come and see her. That's just my opinion, but it seemed so unnecessary and absent of dignity (and my mother wasn't exactly devoid of being vain), that it was painful for me to see. At least one of my relatives came to that conclusion on his own and I salute him for it.

So I didn't go. I assume I could have changed flights and got there on time but for what? To be shunned by two people who had no business shunning any family member? To legitimize their inane and disingenuous claims?

I didn't go because they were lying about essentially everything, their keeping her artificially breathing against the terms of her living will, and their continued denial of their misdeeds kept me away. I've always been above those family dynamics. I moved away from those people after college and never went back. There are reasons.

I suppose I will always be the son that didn't care enough, but that's not the truth. I'm the son that was done being talked down behind his back by tiny, insignificant people. My wife went, and took the kids, and later when she told me how she and my busybody sister had an unpleasant conversation, my sister said that she hadn't "a mean bone in her body." Then she must be a squid. My wife told her that she'd seen it and that essentially ended the conversation. My wife's take? When my sister thinks no one's looking, that's when she's doing her dirty work. And I'm sure she's write. What she does is fairly apparent.

So my mother's gone. I suppose with luck I never have to see two of my three siblings again. And I won't miss them. I have always had an almost pathological disdain of dishonesty, of lying, and there's a taint that stains any dealing with these people.

I tried once to get on better terms with my sister. My dad asked me to, and I invited her to my wedding. I really would have tried. She sent a note saying she didn't think I was sincere enough in wanting her to come, so she was going to decline. So much for that effort.

Bottom line, they don't know the relationship I had with my parents any more than I knew theirs. We were in Florida, they were in Minnesota. The point is that they presume to know and to shape their own reality based on their twisted little partnership. That's up to them, and they're welcome to it, but it's a shame and pity they had to carry it over first to my dad's funeral, and then to my mother's.

Shame on them.

Whatever they do, though, doesn't change any facts. Oh, they can convince their friends of anything they want to, and more power to them. Talking behind people's backs is how they've gotten to where they are. There's nothing anyone could do about it if they tried.

So congratulations, you two. You kept me out of Mom's funeral. I can only hope that I'm more at peace with that decision than they can be with theirs, but I'm sure that's a forlorn hope.

Good night, Mom. I miss you.