Volume 5, Issue 38: To Save Us All From Satan’s Power

"That Grinch, man, that's where the money is."

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There is no better indicator of how fortunate, even blessed, of a life I have lived than by how few funerals I have attended.

I understand the importance of the ritual of funerals, their value not just for the loved ones who were closest to the deceased but also for anyone who knew them at all, a chances to say goodbye, a chance to remember, maybe to reflect. This does not make them, as a ritual, feel any less strange. There is nothing more intensely private than mourning, than grief, an emotion you cannot talk your way out of, one you cannot put off until you are ready for it. And yet there are, mere days after a loss you’ll never truly fully recover from, standing in front of your entire world at your worst moment. Grief is a gaping wound, an empty space that follows you around—you’re plainly blown apart. Having to pull it together, to package your private pain for public consumption, feels cruel, almost masochistic. Many years back, a friend of mine’s mother died, suddenly, way too young. I saw him at the funeral and could not believe he was able to stand, let alone talk. I kept expecting him to rip his clothes off and run howling through the street. I would not have blamed him. But he had to perform. His grief required a public airing.

Those who have been through having someone so closed to them ripped from their life—because I have been so fortunate as to not be, not yet—have told me there is some practical value in this, in having the first days after a loss of a loved one be so filled with activity and busywork. It gives your mind something else to focus on, keeping you occupied and, temporarily, your grief at arm’s length. You stand up, next to the casket, or the urn, alongside your closest family members, and you shake hands with an endless line of people, most of whom you know but some of which you don’t. (I can’t imagine a worst time to meet someone for the first time. Maybe while falling out of a plane?) You can see old friends, tell old stories, distract yourself with minutiae, oh I haven’t seen Mary in years, she looks great, I heard her son moved to Boston. In the same way that a wedding has so many moving parts and so much external stimulation that you don’t really process anything that’s happening until it’s over—my wedding was such a blur I don’t actually have a single memory of seeing my sister there, though photos reliably inform me she was standing just a few feet away—a funeral can give you an opportunity to stand outside yourself for a few hours, outside of your grief.

I imagine this is true. That I do not know for sure—that, that right there, that’s a blessing.

I was back in Illinois this week for my uncle’s funeral, in Moweaqua, Illinois, a town of 2,000 people in the middle of infinite cornfields, the village where my mother grew up. I stayed in an Airbnb right across the street from the funeral home, something I found fortuitous until I realized the Airbnb likely exists almost entirely for that purpose. I loved my uncle, he was my uncle, but we were not unusually close; he was not married, lived alone, had no children and rarely left his apartment. He shared a birthday with my son, though I was a lot more fascinated by this fact than he was. He was only 10 years older than me, and when he attended a community college just a few miles from my home, he lived for a year in our house, and we even shared a bunkbed. I don’t remember it well. I was eight and there was a college student in my room. It wasn’t too bad, if just because it always seemed like he was in more trouble with my parents than I was—it was nice to have the heat off for a while. But there were no real bonding moments, no life lessons he passed on, no real lasting reminiscences from the time. I remember him listening to a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughan. I doubt he much loved spending his first year of college sharing a room with an eight-year-old either. But I don’t really know. It’s too late to find out now.

He wanted to be cremated, so we buried his ashes right next to his parents. It was just the seven of us standing out there: My parents, my sister, his brother (and other uncle), my aunt and my cousin Denny. I said a few words to get us going, and then everyone shared some memories. My uncle lived a troubled life, particularly in his final years, isolated, difficult to reach, prone to incident. My mom said she was grateful that maybe he had finally found some peace, and that she was happy he was back close to their parents. We stood silently for a moment. Then we went back to the funeral home and greeted people for three hours.

Two gentlemen born on November 21.

My uncle’s life was one lived mostly alone, and while there were a few visitors for him, the majority of people who came did so to show support for my mother and her remaining living brother. My parents moved from Illinois to Georgia seven years ago, so there were many people who had missed them and were very happy to see them. I saw my parents light up every time. There’s our old neighbor, there’s the guy Dad worked with for decades, there’s an old classmate, they were in Girl Scouts together, haven’t seen her in, what, 55 years? They smiled and laughed and hugged.

A few months back, going through some old storage boxes, my mother found a piece of fabric next to a note from her grandmother, my great-grandmother. The note was a pattern for a quilt she was going to knit for the newest baby, the surprise baby, my uncle, born 14 years after his youngest older sibling. My grandmother never ended up finishing the quilt, so my mom did. About two months ago, she drove to Illinois to give it to him. I was against this idea; my uncle had become increasingly erratic and isolated in recent years, and I worried about what he’d do when my mother just showed up at his door. But he welcomed her in, and she gave him the quilt, and they sat and talked in person for the first time in years. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer three weeks later, and died three weeks after that. My cousin and I stopped to see him in hospice care when I was in Illinois last month. It was clear, to us and to him, there wasn’t much time left. He died three days later. At the funeral home, a picture of him sat on top of that quilt.

Late in the visitation, a woman in her late ‘50s, around my uncle’s age, came in, alone. She was the first person there none of us recognized. She introduced herself to my mom and revealed that she was my uncle’s girlfriend in high school. She had gotten divorced a while back and had spent a few years trying to find my uncle, to no avail. She saw his obituary posted on the Moweaqua Facebook page, and she had driven several hours to say goodbye. She was extremely nice. Later, we would all debate whether or not it was for the best that she didn’t find him; he was not at his best toward the end. Maybe her memories of him were best left independent of the reality. Or maybe finding him would have changed things for him? Who can know? We marveled that we’d never heard anything about her. How much about him did we never learn? A life contains so many mysteries, so many untold stories.

This was my second funeral since the pandemic. That’s not very many, I don’t think, for a someone in his late 40s. Is it? But all I need to do is talk to anyone older than me, my parents age, even younger, to learn: This is my future. My mother still keeps her subscription to the Mattoon Journal-Gazette, which like so many other newspapers has been gutted by Lee Enterprises, just so she can read the obituaries. (One of the things we’ve learned from this process is just how expensive it is to get an obituary in a local paper; what at The New York Times is a valued beat is, at most local newspapers, just a money grab for the last generation that, like my uncle did, still values an obituary in the paper.) To go to a funeral home is to remember that this happens all the time, that someone was in this place yesterday and someone else will be here tomorrow, and this will keep on keeping on until the person in that place is you. The late Roger Angell, in his immortal essay This Old Man, wrote that, “our dead are almost beyond counting and we want to herd them along, pen them up somewhere in order to keep them straight.” So many people, some close to you, some just names you’d thought you’d long forgotten, here and then just gone, one more open seat on the boat.

I know this is my future. But it has not been my past. Which leaves me vulnerable.

My first grandparent died in 1987; my other grandfather, the one I was named after, died a few years after that. One of my grandmothers died in 2005; the other lived long enough to meet my first son, named after her first son. About 20 minutes before her funeral, my father asked me to say something, if I could write something up, being a writer and all. I scribbled madly in a steno pad for 15 minutes and then went up there and tried to sum up the life of a 94-year-old woman in 500 words. I do not remember what I said, or what it felt like to say it. Afterwards, people said I did fine up there. I think they probably have to say that.

Many of my friends have lost their parents in the last decade or so. I have been to some of these funerals. It is remarkable to me that my friends are even able to stand. But they are able. They stand there and they shake hands and there’s this massive void that just appeared in their life and still they stand.

And, I realize now, they’re stronger for it.

After the visitation, I walked across the street to the Airbnb, where I had stashed snacks, beer and wine for the seven of us—if I know one thing about Leitch/Dooley family funerals, it’s that, afterwards, you better have some booze nearby. My Airbnb was on the second floor of an old office building, though, and my aunt has a bum knee that won’t allow her to climb that many stairs. So my sister and I went upstairs, filled our arms with beverages and brought it all downstairs. And for the next two hours, the seven of us sat on a stoop in downtown Moweaqua, Illinois, drinking and talking and sharing stories, about my uncle, about ourselves, about the loved ones we have lost, about the times we all shared together. We spent every Christmas in this town, for decades, but now we’re all spread apart, and we’re all older, and it’s just not easy to see each other anymore, to spend time with the people who have known us the longest, and the most, at our best and very much at our worst. The sun began to set over the flat cornfields of Shelby County, and still we stood out there, not wanting to leave, not wanting this to send, brought together by death to remind us all of who we were and what we have. Eventually, we had to wrap it up. It was getting dark. We had to go home. We hugged. We flagged down a guy driving by in his truck and asked him to take our photo. He happily obliged. A couple of us even cried a little.

Why do we have funerals? We do it to say goodbye. We do it to honor those we have lost, and remember them. But funerals are, in the end, for the living: For the people who remain, for what they hold onto, for telling the stories that only they know, for sharing with the people in their lives who will always be with them. We would have not gotten together this week were my uncle still alive. That he brought us together was an unlikely final gift. I do not want to attend any more funerals. But attend more funerals, nevertheless, I will. Just thinking about it makes me want to run howling naked through the streets. But when it happens, I know I won’t. I’ll have those people, and others, to support me, a role I will also perform for them. We will drink and laugh and cry and tell stories and we’ll be happy and fortunate to be together, to have known and loved enough to even be able to grieve in the first place, to someday do it again, just lucky as all hell to get to be alive.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Be Worried About the Mets Fans in Your Life, New York. I really do love the Mets, mostly because I love their fans.

2. The Best Players Who Haven’t Won a World Series Yet, MLB.com. Maybe this is the year for Bryce Harper.

3. This Week’s Five Fascinations, MLB.com. The Mets rotation, the future of the Tigers, Bryce Harper, first-time champions and the last gasp of the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals.

4. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. Only one more week left with every team on this one.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, Grierson finally back, we talked about his film festival travels and discussed “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Rebel Ridge.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I wonder if the Cardinals will be any different next year.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we recap the Kentucky game.

Morning Lineup, I did Monday morning’s show.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“How We Forgot About the War on Terror,” David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times. From DWW, here’s another, as they’re saying now, banger.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these. But I am starting to catch up!)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Brooklyn,” Dinosaur Jr. Songwriter Jesse Malin suffered a serious spine injury last year that left him paralyzed from the waist down. As a way to help him (and assist with his medical bills), a whole bunch of great artists have covered Jesse Malin songs for a new album, including Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello, the Hold Steady, Spoon, Susanna Hoffs, Frank Turner and Dinosaur Jr., which might be my favorite song of the whole album.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

Hey, HOW ABOUT THOSE ILLINI?

I-L-L!!!

Have a great weekend, all.


Best,
Will