Week 8: "We are gathered here today to remember....."

My grandmother was a very soft spoken women, the very a typical matriarch of the family. The kind of woman who could make iron freeze brittle with her disapproving stare and snap under the weight of it, yet she was always kind to my brother and I. She never raised a hand or her voice, she didn't really have too with that quiet air of authority she possessed. Though I do remember one time she did raise her voice quite clearly; it was one of the last foot ball games of my high school career against MDI. I'd gotten into slug fest with the linemen across the pitch from me and got sucker punch under the grill the result of which was a broken nose and my upper lip being torn from my skull. When I got back up looking all a bloody mess I heard her then, beating people with her purse and swearing like a sailor that just came to port. I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Now I'm seated on an oak pew stained almost black, the collar of this new shirt rubbing my neck raw as the priest standing at his pulpit delivering the eulogy. I know my eyes are red rimmed and swollen but I haven't cried, I don't want too. Not next to the stone visage of my mother as she gazes on at the closed casket draped in flowers. I'm straining something on the inside with the effort but I've managed, I'm 'the man of the house' and have to keep up that strong face. Around my mother, brother, and I our relatives are arranged; some stifling their grief into handkerchiefs or the shoulders of the people next to them, others simply listen, their faces carefully impassive as if afraid to let that Longely stoicism crack for even a moment,even under these circumstances.

It had been a heart attack. One so fast, so devastating that my grandfather Earl had left for the store and come back ten minutes later, she'd died in her sleep. Earl's seated up front, his old face so lined with suppressed emotion his flesh almost looks like it's made from sun beaten oak. I passed him in the bathroom at the wake, I've never seen him so...small before; like someone had come along and deflated his shoulders with one quick poke of a blade. I found my Aunt at one point behind the church staring off into the distant sky line of Bangor, near oblivious to anything else around her. It's like we were all falling apart in our own little ways.

As the sermon came to a close, as those gathered rose one last time to file by the casket, I steel myself, take a deep breath and follow suit; the line of mourners stretches back to touch the polished set of double doors near the end of the room. I couldn't help but catch the glint of colored light streaming through stained glass windows reflecting in tears. I remember in that moment as I slowly walked my way down the isle the most absurd thought struck me: Who will make my peanut butter and fluff sandwiches the way I like them now?

And that's when I began to cry.