I just went to a funeral for a man I didn't know. He was a friend of my father's. My stepmother needed a ride so I brought her. I hadn't been in that church for years. I don't think I have been to a Catholic funeral mass since my father's but his was in the stone church around the corner. It is beautiful in there. Boats and blue and light and shells and I was happy to be sitting listening to the wife of my high school music theory teacher play the organ. I forget sometimes how much I like to sing Alleluia.
When I picked her up my stepmother told me that he was a man nobody likes. Because of her aphasia I couldn't tell why but she said he took some things and did the wrong thing with them and then he didn't have any more and he didn't work after that and his kids didn't see him and he was a lawyer.
At the funeral I saw a woman wearing a hat I made across the aisle. It could have used another inch, I think. Blue alpaca. The woman in front of us turned and spoke to my stepmother. The old lady across the aisle was wearing a sweater she had knit or someone had knit for her. I know the pattern. Rust-colored wool.
The priest was a friend of one of the sons and told stories of meeting the dead man years before. And he told stories about watching the dead man slipping into the church after everybody was seated for weddings and baptisms and other family ceremonies and slipping out again before the family turned around.
I forgot about funerals, how the body is there in the middle of the room. How the children try to keep their children quiet. How people cry for so many reasons. I thought about burying my father twelve years ago, about how bitterly cold it was. It is not as cold today. I remembered my grandmother as thin as parchment standing in her nylons in the bitter cold, the wind biting at her ankles. I remembered holding my belly during the service.
We parked halfway between the church and the house you will soon have. The bells were playing a long song that sounded sad and hopeful at the same time. I hope you can hear the bells from your house.
