Letting Go
A Short Story by:
John Payne
It was September 15, 1950, and I was in the second week of first grade when there was a knock at the classroom door. I could not see clearly through the frosted glass panes on the top half of the door, but from the dark triangular shape behind the glass, I could tell the person was another one of the sisters. My teacher, Sister Saint Frances, went over to the door and opened it. She spoke quietly to the other nun. When she closed the door and returned to the front of the classroom, she told us that she had to step outside for a minute and that everyone was to look at the letters above the black board, and to start writing the alphabet with their very best Palmer Method hand writing, just the way it looked on the wall. “There is to be no talking," she said, "Jesus will be watching.” Most of the class knew the alphabet already, but the cursive letters, both capital and small, were new to many in the class. Since I was the youngest of seven children, I had seen this style of writing before when my brothers and sisters were doing their homework. I could already write my name in cursive. My sister Florence saw to that. Sister Saint Frances then beckoned me to come with her. “Uh oh,” I thought, “What now?” As I came up to the front of the classroom, she took me by the hand and led me from the room.
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Earlier that morning, as always, Mom got up and began the morning rituals: waking us for school, preparing lunches, signing papers, finding sweaters, settling disputes, and kissing everyone goodbye. Some days Dad would help with this routine if he had not worked the midnight shift at the railroad the night before, in which case he would not even be home yet. Rosemarie was the oldest of the children. There were seven of us. Rosie, as I called her had already graduated high school two years earlier. To me Rosemarie was like another parent in terms of assigning chores and doling out discipline as necessary. Sometimes she would also help out with the morning routine as needed. Tommy was in his senior year; Gene was a sophomore; and Frank was an eighth grader who would be entering high school next year. Flo was in the sixth grade and Patsy was a fourth grader. I was a little boy at the time, just six years old. It was both exciting and a bit scary to start school, especially with some of my siblings teasing me from time to time about the torturous treatment I was going to receive from the nuns, and how much homework I was going to have. I had not gone to kindergarten or any kind of day care so this was the first rung on my ladder of independence. The proverbial cord was about to be cut.
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Military precision was not quite the term one would use to describe the morning activities in our home. Organized chaos may have been a more apt phrase with emphasis on the word organized. The entire scene was a rhythmic dance of comings and goings, ups and downs and ins and outs. Since our home had only one bathroom, the fact that this scene went off without any serious hitches day in and day out would be the envy of any time and motion study team.
On this day, after my two sisters and I started our trek to school, Mom prepared herself a cup of tea and began to get herself ready for work. She worked part time at a bakery which was about twelve blocks from where we lived. Depending on the season and the demands of the current morning, sometimes she walked to work, allowing her to add the trolley fare to her ‘pin money’. If she wanted to linger over a second cup of tea or if the weather was too inclement, she would walk down to the corner and take the number 53 trolley car the eight blocks up Wayne Avenue to Coulter Street, then walk a couple of blocks west on Coulter to the bakery. This day the weather was mild enough for the walk, but she was running a bit behind and she also planned to scan the newspaper for back to school specials while riding the trolley. Mom’s name was Rosella, but she was called Rose by Dad and by most adults. She only used Rosella when filling out forms or signing official documents.
“Good Morning, Rose,” said the trolley driver as she boarded the large submarine shaped green and tan trolley car. The Philadelphia Transportation Company, or P.T.C. as Philadelphians referred to it, was a labyrinth of tracks and wires that wove their way throughout the city. Commuters could spend one fare and by obtaining transfer chits, they could ride throughout the city changing cars and directions as long as they were advancing their original direction.
“Good Morning,” Mom said, as she handed the driver her fare. “How are you today, Roger?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Roger said; “The kids are back to school, so my wife is happy; says she can finally get some things done during the day.”
“Tell me about it” she said, as the driver coaxed the trolley along the two steel tracks that were embe dded into the grey cobblestone roadbed. Mom sat up front, across from and slightly behind the driver. She scanned a newspaper that had been folded and stuck between two seats while the driver pressed pedals and flicked switches to propel the trolley and control its doors. From time to time he yanked on a cord that was above his head. Pulling the cord caused a loud clanging sound that could be heard a half block away. Trollies do not have horns to sound warnings like the other vehicles with which they share the road, but their clanging sound is very distinctive.
As passengers boarded and departed block after block, Mom read the advertisements and noted which items were on sale. Finally, as the trolley reached her destination, the driver turned to her and said, “Rose,” but she did not respond. Then in a slightly louder and more insistent voice he called her name again; “Rose!” Startled, she looked up. “Coulter Street,” said the driver, and then to soften the sharp tone that he used to attract her attention, he added, “Hustle Rose, the light is in your favor.” The driver had just stopped for a red light, which meant the light would be green for crossing traffic. After stepping down, Mom had to walk around and cross in front of the trolley to go west on Coulter Street back to the bakery. She quickly wedged the paper between the seat backs again, grabbed her purse and hurried off the trolley saying, “Thanks. I’ll see you next time Roger.” “Bye Rose,” he said, “Be careful.” As Mom stepped down from the trolley, Roger reflexively glanced into his external rear view mirrors. To his shock he saw a truck racing up on his left side. Passing a fixed track trolley car on the left into oncoming traffic was unheard of, not to mention the fact that it was illegal. In addition, since Roger was stopped for the traffic light, the light was also red for the truck. As the truck driver raced up the left side of the trolley, straddling the southbound tracks as he squeezed between the trolley and the cars that were parked on the west side of the street, his truck could not be seen by the crossing traffic that was going West on Coulter Street, perpendicular to the trolley. As Mom rounded the front of the trolley, she could not see the truck either. She clutched her purse and hurried across the tracks in front of the trolley. The trolley driver, who was watching this predictable scene play out, yelled Rose’s name as he reached up and frantically yanked on the cord to ring the clangor. As she was passing from the front of his trolley onto the southbound tracks, Roger watched as Rose turned her head back toward him to see why he was clanging the bell so much. The truck driver either did not hear, or was ignoring the clanging of trolley. As the truck hit her she was lifted out of her shoes and thrown across the intersection like a rag doll. Within minutes the wails of an ambulance, police cars and mourning commuters could be heard.
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Walking along next to her and holding her hand, I could hear the rustle of the huge rosary beads that hung from the wide waistband on her habit. They were right next to my ear and gently bumped against her as she escorted me down the long dim corridor. On the walls, above my head, outside each of the classrooms, there were three long rows of hooks which were obscured by several layers of coats and sweaters of the children inside the rooms. Those were the years when there were fifty plus children to a classroom. Other than Sister Carmody, who taught music, there were no specialized teachers such as reading teachers, language teachers, math teachers, or bilingual teachers; there was just one nun teaching each class. As we approached the lobby I wondered if I was in trouble. Sister Saint Frances did not say why she wanted me to come with her, and I could not remember doing anything bad yet today. When we walked out the front door of the school and looked down the wide, grey, granite steps, I saw a shiny black car parked at the curb. I did not recognize the man in black who was driving the car, but I knew that he was a priest because he had one of those black shirts with a stiff white collar.
As Sister Saint Frances opened the back door to help me into the car, I was surprised to see that my two real sisters were already in the back seat. No one was talking. My big sister Florence, a sixth grader who had the same color strawberry blond hair as I, was sitting by the far door and looking at me with a slightly knitted brow and a curious expression on her face. Patsy, who was in the center seat, was closest to me in age. She was a fourth grader with dark auburn hair, just like our oldest brother, Tom, and our oldest sister, Rosie. Patsy flared her eyes wide and stared at me. I knew that look and I reflexively said, “I didn’t do anything.” Once I was in the car and settled, the priest eased the car away from the curb and drove the six blocks to our home.
When we arrived at my house, the priest pulled up to the curb and let us out. He told us to go straight into the house. Once inside, I was surprised to see my brothers, Frank and Gene. My sister Rosie was there too. I wondered if Tommy was also home. There were some adults standing and sitting in the parlor. The parlor was what we called this room. It wouldn’t be until years later that I would refer to such rooms as living rooms, but to do so in those days may have elicited a comment from my Irish grandmother in her thick brogue such as, “Sure, and look who’s puttin’ on the airs,” whatever that meant. Then I noticed that one of the adults was speaking to my sister Patsy, after which Pat came over and took me by the hand and said, “Come on Junior, we have to go outside”. Technically, I was not a ‘Junior’, since Dad’s name was Howard and mine was John, but that is what the family called me. I didn’t question Patsy about going outside because adults were always bossing kids around; besides, I didn’t want to be inside with all these big people standing around murmuring to each other anyway.
Once outside, Patsy and I sat on the landing of our two tiered front steps. There were four steps rising up from the sidewalk, a short landing, then four more steps and a final stride onto the porch. We lived in a four bedroom, straight through, semi- detached home, which was basically one of two homes attached to each other by a common wall. There was an alley on either side of the double home structure that provided access to two small connected yards in the rear of the homes. The yards were separated by a single section of wrought iron fence. This pattern repeated itself up and down both sides of the street. There were a few maple trees on the street. One of the trees was directly in front of our house and its’ roots were causing the pavement to begin to lift. At the porch there was a wide wooden balustrade with large spindles that divided the two porches. The center of the steps had a silver looking pipe railing that was about three inches in diameter, and which ran on a descending angle from the balustrade to the landing, and then leveled out for about two feet before continuing it’s decent to the bottom of the steps. That was all that separated the two houses. This was one of my favorite spots. I liked to sit on the level part of that railing and then fall backwards, catching myself in the crook of my knees. I imagined I was a trapeze artist in the circus, at least on days when I wasn’t doubling for the Cisco Kid or filling in for Superman. This was the place where Patsy and I chose to sit and talk.
Once seated on the landing with our feet on the step below, Patsy turned to me and said, “Mommy’s dead.” Neither of us spoke as her words forced their way into my consciousness. “She was hit by a truck on the way to work, and she was killed,” she continued. I continued to stare at her in shock and disbelief; then I began to cry.
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Several days had passed since I first heard the awful news from my sister Pat. A lot of people were coming and going from the house. The only time the phone wasn’t ringing was when someone was already using it. “I’m so sorry;” “You poor baby;” “What can we do?” “How can I help?” These phrases and many more like them were all I heard the big people saying over those past few days. The house was a bee hive of activity. There were so many visitors. I met aunts and uncles whom I had not seen for a long time, and many I did not recall ever meeting at all. “I’m your aunt so and so; I’m your uncle Wee-Wee; I’m your dad’s cousin;” and so it went.
Finally, it was the night of the wake. This was a new word to me. I had never been to a wake before. It was to be held in the old Irish custom, at our home in the parlor. This evening would be the first time I saw Mom since a few days back when she kissed me and sent me off to school with my sisters. Tonight was different from the last few days. There was a lot less animation. People were moving slower, more deliberately. Although many were talking in other rooms, they did so in very hushed tones.
As I wandered aimlessly from room to room, I saw people crying or holding someone else who was crying. Invariably, when I made eye contact with one of them, if they were not already crying, they started to right then, as they gave me a hug or ran their hand through my hair. On one of my trips into the parlor as I looked at Mom lying in the casket, Dad said, ”C’mon sport, It’s time for bed,” as he picked me up and held me forward, saying, “Give Mommy a kiss good bye.”
As my lips touched my mother’s forehead, I was stunned. It was not as though I could not grasp that my Mom was dead. I had absorbed that fact over the past few days, but I wasn’t prepared for the cold, hard, dry feeling of her forehead against my lips. Up until now, I had only known the soft, warm and gentle touch of this woman who showered me with love. The shock of this contrast was startling; and the memory became seared in my psyche, where it would reside for the rest of my life.
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The next morning as I came downstairs into the parlor, I found it as tidy as always. “Had this all been a dream?” I wondered. There was the big couch against the wall, across from the bottom of the quarter circle stair that spilled into the parlor. Again, in later years I would call the couch a sofa, but at this time I referred to the big three cushioned piece as a couch. The couch was on the wall across from the steps just six feet or so from the entry doors. Off to the left, along the same wall, there was an old upright piano. On the other side, between the couch and the entry doors, was an iron radiator. On snow days the entire top of the four feet long radiator would be covered with gloves and hats and scarves that my brothers and sisters had placed there to dry. Above the radiator, on the wall, there was a small mahogany rectangular knick-knack holder with a mirrored back and three shelves. On the adjacent wall there was the front picture window, and in the corner where the window wall met the wall of the entry, there was a matching chair which we called, Dad’s chair. ‘Dad’s chair’ was positioned on an angle, with its’ back against the corner of the entry and the window walls. A floor lamp stood behind the chair.
Entry was the word I used to describe the small four feet by six feet ante room that intruded into the living space of the parlor. The word vestibule had not made its’ way into my vocabulary yet. The entry had two sets of double doors. The inside doors led from the parlor into the entry and the outside doors led from the entry onto the porch. This was a common architectural feature of Northeastern homes; it provided an air lock to prevent cold air from blowing into the living area when someone entered the home during the harsh winters. It also prevented heat from escaping. The floor of the entry was covered with small white mosaic tiles that were octagonal in shape. This was where I always found the mail which was pushed through the little metal flap in the bottom of the fixed side of the double front door. In the winter when it snowed, several pairs of galoshes could be found in this small vestibule, along with a shovel leaning against the wall. Galoshes did not even seem like a strange word to me. It was already part of my vocabulary because that was what everyone in my family called them. On the exterior wall, across from the couch and radiator, there was a bookcase and a table with a lamp. A single double hung window was just to the left of the staircase. There was also another small square table with a record player on top of it. The table was just slightly larger than the record player. It had one drawer and a shelf at the bottom that had a stack of records on it. They were the large 33 and 78 rpms. Some were in paper sleeves and others were in album style binders. This was before the age of vinyl, so the records were very fragile, and had to be handled carefully, because if dropped they would shatter like a dinner plate. I loved it when Mom or Dad played the records, because when the music began to slow down, they would let me wind the crank to speed it up again; but I was never supposed to play with it when no one was around, and most of the time I obeyed.
I was surprised to find the parlor back to normal, when just the night before it was filled with baskets and sprays of flowers, and lots and lots of big people talking and crying and praying, and with Mom lying in a fancy casket with a shiny white sheet and pillow. Casket and coffin were two more new words that found their way into my lexicon. Like most people, I really didn’t know the difference. People seemed to use the terms interchangeably. There had been so many flowers at the wake that I found the smell pleasant but a bit overwhelming. For years afterward I disliked wakes and funerals and flower shops. I wondered where the flowers had gone, and thought, “Who took them? Who put everything back where it belonged? When did they do it, and where was Mommy? “
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St. Francis of Assisi is a large Catholic church with gothic architecture. The outside is constructed with huge blocks of grey speckled granite and sandstone trim. Wide steps span the front of the main entrance to the church, and there are two brass railings that divide the steps into three sections. There are three sets of large, ornately carved, wooden double doors at the top of the steps. That end of the church is anchored on either side by two stone towers with spires at the top. Under each of the towers, at ground level, there is also a set of heavy wooden double doors. Those doors lead to the basement of the church. Along the sides of the church, near the rear, there are two more entrances. Each of those entrances is also at the top of a stone staircase, and adorned with thick double wooden doors. Those doors access the side outcroppings of the building. As with many gothic churches, the floor plan is that of a cross. St. Francis was a large parish, and was served well by the three altars in the main church, and the three additional altars in the lower church. During the parish’s heyday in the nineteen-fifties, it was not unusual to have two and even three Masses being conducted simultaneously on one level of the church. The inside of the church was typical of gothic architecture, with pointed arches, massive murals, and plenty of gold leaf. Long and intricate stained glass windows with scenes from the bible lined both sides of the church, and larger than life statues of saints and religious icons stood guard throughout. In the rear of the church, up in a balcony where I would one day sing in the choir, there is a gigantic pipe organ that spanned the width of the balcony, and which had a staircase of keyboards, and multicolored pulls and stops. On special occasions when the organist played the leviathan to its fullest potential, the congregation felt as though the vibrations were coming from the floor right up through their bones. This is the church where the funeral Mass for the Mom was conducted.
When the long, shiny black car pulled up outside the church, there was a large crowd of people standing outside in groups of three, four, five, and more. Some were talking; some were smoking; some laughing and others crying. A muscular man with tight wavy red hair got out of the front passenger seat. He was my uncle John. Uncle John then opened the rear door of the car and helped Dad out, and then the two of them assisted a frail elderly lady out of the vehicle. Dad said, “Here mom, hold my arm.” She wasn’t actually his mother; she was Mom’s mother, but that is what Dad called her. As he guided the grief stricken woman across the sidewalk to the steps of the church, Uncle John helped another small dark haired woman out of the vehicle; behind her a short stocky man with dark hair emerged. His name was Robert. He was Mom’s brother, and the dark haired woman named Marie was her sister.
The next car in the line transported me and my two sisters, Florence and Patsy, who rode home from school with me a few days earlier. As we stepped from the car a woman cried out, “Oh, the babies!” and began sobbing into some man’s shoulder. My three brothers and my oldest sister, Rosie, got out of the car behind us. As the family climbed the front steps to enter the church the throng of people became noticeably quiet and, as if rehearsed, parted to let us through. Mr. Riley, a neighbor and usher, escorted our family down the long center aisle to the front pew of the church. Stationed in the aisle, at the front of the church next to the first several pews was the casket which was now covered by a black cloth, with a brocade of a white cross embroidered into it.
The center altar was adorned with the numerous bouquets of flowers which were in our parlor the previous evening. There were also many, many more new sprays and vases of flowers. Once again, I found the strong, sweet perfume of mixed fragrances to be at the same time, pleasant and stifling. I had never experienced such a powerful assault to my senses before. The usher guided us into the first pew. While entering the pew, I stole a sideways glance to see if I was supposed to sit or kneel. I was glad to see that everyone began sitting. Whenever I knelt down in church, I could barely see over the back of the pew in front of me. The entire time the large pipe organ filled the air with muted dirges, as friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbors, nuns, and curious parishioners filed into the large church. I was oblivious as to what was going on behind me.
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As I looked up at Dad, it seemed strange to see him in church. I knew Dad was not Catholic, even though the rest of my family was. At some point, while being seen and not heard, I learned from the ‘Big people conversations’ that dad was a High Episcopalian. At the time I was so proud that I knew the word Episcopalian, although I had no idea what it meant. Once when I asked what an Episcopalian was, Dad said it was like a Catholic without the middle man. Mom smiled at him and shook her finger in a mock scolding manner. I had no idea what it all meant but was glad that Dad was pretty close to being a Catholic. Six year olds don’t really want to be different from their parents in any way. In later years I learned that the reason that I was not an Episcopalian like Dad was because he promised my mom to raise the children Catholic.
Mom was an Irish Catholic. The little lady who Dad had helped into the church was born in Ireland. Her name was Theresa McWilliams when she came to America and Theresa Jette after she was married. Theresa, or Nanny as we called her, passed through Ellis Island when she was about thirty years old. She had emigrated from Ireland on her own. The family lore used to be that she was sixteen when she came to America, but in recent years I checked the Ellis Island records on the computer and discovered that she was closer to thirty. That also seemed to make a lot more sense to me, for several reasons that I won’t go into here. I liked the way Nanny spoke. She had a light, high pitched voice, and used quaint phrases, such as, “It’s himself” and “Don’t be takin’ liberties.” In later years whenever I saw a movie featuring the actor Barry Fitzgerald, I thought of Nanny. On visits to Aunt Marie’s house, which is where my grandmother lived, she would always give me and my two youngest sisters a dollar and five cents just as we were leaving to go home. That was my first real life lesson in practical math and high finance. A single dollar could not be divided evenly three ways, but by adding that extra nickel, Nanny had ensured that each of the three children received thirty-five cents, and more importantly, that no fights or hurt feelings ensued.
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Suddenly, it was quiet. The murmuring and rustling that could be heard in the church along with the thumping of kneelers being rocked into place, the snaps of purses opening and closing as mourners reached for tissues, and the elongated serene notes of the organ had ceased. The silence took on the same mood of anticipation that one experiences after an overture ends and immediately before the curtain goes up at a live theater performance. Then a priest and two altar boys appeared from the doorway of the sacristy, which is a small room off to the left of the main altar where the priests gather themselves, and adorn their vestments before coming out to perform religious services. The priest was holding a chain from which hung a perforated gold urn that had some kind of smoke emanating from it. One altar boy was carrying a gold bowl with some kind of implement in it and the other was carrying a thick book, palms up, in the open position. The boy with the book walked to the altar railing, came down the three steps, and placed the big book on the lectern that had been positioned on the landing at the head of the casket. The priest and the other altar boy followed the first through the thick mahogany gates of the railing that had been propped open, and down the steps to the landing.
The priest began speaking about Mom, using her first name Rosella, in an attempt to indicate a level of familiarity while at the same time demonstrating a lack of it. He spoke of her “Abiding faith and devotion to the church and its teachings, as evidenced by the eight beautiful children who came to the church through her.” Up to this point, my mind had been wandering a bit as I watched the theater that was being played out. My current focus had been on the new sweet aroma that found its way to my nose. It was the smoke from the gold urn that had drifted to the first few pews. I had never smelled incense before. It was a powerful smell but not unpleasant. I was intrigued and wondered what it was and if that urn was hot, and where the flame was if there was one.
It was the mention of eight children that jolted my consciousness back to the current ritual and to what the priest was saying. “Mom didn’t have eight children!” I thought. “There were only seven of us. Why did he say eight?” I tugged at Pat’s sleeve to tell her that the priest made a mistake, but she looked down at me with scrunched eyebrows, pursing her lips imperceptibly as she shook her head no. My attention went back to watching the priest and it would not be until years later that someone informed me that Mom and Dad had a son before my oldest sibling, Rosemarie, was born. That baby’s name was Howard, the same as Dad, but he died when he was only two months old.
The priest now moved from behind the lectern and took the smoking urn from the altar boy. Then he stepped off the landing and began to wave the urn back and forth with a small pendulum motion which caused more of the sweet smoke to waft into the air. The priest continued to do this as he circled the casket and soon the immediate area was thick with the aroma of incense. As he completed his sojourn around the casket, he handed the urn to the altar boy who had carried the book, and then took the gold bowl from the other altar boy. Once again he stepped down into the main aisle and began walking around the casket, but this time he took a device that looked something like a microphone from the bowl and began several sweeping overhand gestures toward the casket, then toward the people who were sitting in the pews. As he came around to my side of the casket and performed the throwing gesture, I was shocked to feel drops of water land on my face. The holy water was the third assault on my senses, along with the overwhelming smell of flowers and the strong sweet aroma of the burning incense. The entire time the priest was dispensing the smoke and the water, he was saying something that I could not understand. It was some repetitive chant, but I did not understand any of it since it was in Latin. The priest then returned to the lectern and handed the holy water bowl and the dispenser back to the altar boy. Then the three of them went back up the steps to the altar and the priest conducted a Mass. After the Mass the priest came back to the altar railing and began speaking for the final time. “The lord is my shepherd…”
As the priest continued to read the twenty-third psalm, I saw many of those in attendance exchanging subtle questioning glances at one another. I later learned that these final words were usually reserved for the graveside where the deceased was given a final blessing and final good-byes were whispered. It was part of how the living gained closure. Apparently Dad knew the reason, as did my older brothers and sisters, and some of my aunts and uncles, and Nanny. It was the cemetery. Mom and Dad had obtained a cemetery plot in Mariah Cemetery which was in West Philadelphia, near where they lived when they were first married. It was where they buried young Howard, their first child. It was not a Catholic cemetery; consequently ‘The Church’, according to the pastor, did not permit priests to conduct any kind of rites at a non-Catholic site. Dad was livid. He said he did not realize that God had such a keen interest in real estate. He and Mom had kept their part of the deal. Dad agreed to the children being raised Catholic, even though he was Episcopalian; and Mom saw to it that we all went to Catholic schools and received a “Good Catholic education,” as encouraged by the church . In addition, Mom was a devout Catholic. How could she not be when Nanny, her mother, went to Mass every day? Dad saw this as an affront, to him, to Mom and to us, her children. Nevertheless, he would insist that we remain in Catholic schools and go to Mass every Sunday as prescribed by the church. He did this not because of his promise to the church, but because of his promise to Mom, his Rose. He loved his Rose and now she was gone. Rose was dead; and now, the Catholic Church was dead to him also; although I’m not sure how live it was to him in the first place. Over the years I got the impression that Dad believed in a higher authority but was at best ambivalent about organized religion.
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After the funeral mass as six men, all of whom were related to me, came walking through the two center doors of the church and down the wide front steps, they all looked very somber as they carried the large casket and walked very slowly out of the church, down the steps and over to the back door of another very long, shiny black car. It was called a hearse; this was another addition to my lexicon. As the casket was placed into the rear of the hearse, another man, not a relative, began directing people to go to their cars telling them to form a line behind the hearse and the family vehicles. He had a box of little flags that had clips attached and the word funeral on them. He offered them to the people who would be driving in the funeral procession. The drivers were told to affix the flags to their radio antennae, and be sure to put their lights on while driving to the cemetery.
At the cemetery, as the mourners gathered around the grave, the six men carried the casket over and placed it on two straps that spanned the opening of the grave. Staring at the straps on either side of the grave, I noticed they were wrapped around a large brass pipe. Once the casket was rested securely on the straps, it began to lower but stopped as it got half way into the gaping jaws of the grave. Then someone asked everyone to gather around, and that person began speaking, and talking about Rose and her family, and Howard, and the children, and the whole time I was staring at the straps and wondering how they would get them out of the grave once they lowered the casket. “Wouldn’t it pin the straps to the ground?” I wondered. “Do they just let the whole thing unwind, and put the straps in the grave and then have to get a new set for each person they bury; how do the straps unwind; is there someone controlling them with a motor or something?”
Someone let out an audible sob and once again I was yanked back to the present. Then the people began to leave and as they did they would step up to the grave and place a flower on the casket. Finally, it was my turn. Dad handed me a small rose and said, “This is for Mommy.” Having watched what everyone else had done, I stepped over to the edge of the grave, bent over, and laid the flower on the casket. Then I was led away back to the car with my sisters. For the second time this week I began to cry.
