The Question

The Parting Glass

(The High Kings)

The Question

We were sitting in a small, cozy meeting room. Designed for confidential conversation, and potential baring of souls, it was one of several similar rooms off the main hospice receiving area.

The counselor was kind and well trained, excellent in her often-difficult task of helping family and friends through the grieving process. I was losing my mother, and she was there to help us through the grief.

After some brief introductions, she opened the conversation with a question. “Tell me,” she asked, “Is this your first experience with death and dying?”

I smiled. In the split second or so before I could reply, my brain exploded. Memories flooded my mind.

I remembered my first experience with death. I was almost three years old. It was my grandfather’s wake. I suspect that everyone is familiar with “Irish wakes.” Well, as my family is Irish, wakes were part of our tradition. Back then, wakes were held at home, and in our home, they were held in the parlor. My Grandfather Ed’s coffin was in the parlor, under the window overlooking the crabapple tree. I remember people walking up the front sidewalk, onto the porch, and through our front door. My parents, aunts and uncles warmly greeted and acknowledged everyone. The mourners came in, greeted and hugged one another before going into the parlor to pay their respects and to say a prayer for Ed. At the coffin, they’d kneel at the prie-dieu, often two by two, bless themselves, and often make a quiet comment to one another. They’d then go into the adjoining dining room or to the kitchen for some food, a drink – or two and share stories.

There was always plenty to eat and drink. That was part of the tradition.  For days, family, friends and neighbors would bring food to share – lots of ham, lots of potato salad, cakes and pies, and of course beer and whiskey.

But on that day, Grandpa’s wake had an extra, added dimension. With so many people had come to pay their respects, so many people were standing and visiting in the parlor, and with the added weight of grandpa’s coffin, the floor began to buckle! Sturdy as our house was, it wasn’t meant to hold that many people in one room at one time. There was no panic. Folks responded quickly and quietly left the parlor for the living room, dining room or the kitchen.

My dad responded quickly, as well. He called his friend, a contractor, who could help. Within no time, that friend was at the door, and he and my dad went down into the cellar. Together, they jacked up the sagging floor with what looked like a giant tire jack. All was well. That jack remained in the cellar of our house until the last of the family moved out more than 50 years later. The wake went on. New mourners arrived; none were any the wiser.

That story became part of our family lore. It became a companion piece to quite a different story that had happened years before. It seems that at one point, Uncle Hugh, one of the many older uncles of my grandparents’, had passed.  Of course, his wake was in the parlor. As the 2^nd or 3^rd day of mourning came to a close, the day of Hugh’s funeral approached. That evening, my grandmother, the aunts and other lady friends put food, drinks, and things away for the night. Apparently, though, old Uncle Hugh’s brothers and buddies were not ready to close up shop, or to lay the old guy to rest. At some point during the night, after a couple more beers, it dawned on them that their old, dead companion would likely want to be part of his own celebration. As a result, his boyos lifted him out of his casket and propped him up in the archway between the living room and the parlor. The fact that he was pretty stiff undoubtedly helped. There they toasted him before they, too, finally went off to sleep. And there he stood until funeral morning. Family lore has it that my grandmother, the young matriarch of the family, was none too happy with the boys. Although not in the best of shape themselves that morning, they got an earful from Grandma and laid Hugh back in his casket to rest, chuckling as they did so.

In the nanosecond I sat there in the little room in the hospice center, I remembered my years as an altar boy. We lived close to our parish church and to our parochial school. As a result, whenever there was need of a server for a funeral during the week, one of my friends and I would often get the assignment. I don’t know how much school we missed over the years, but I suspect that we averaged 3 to 4 funerals each month. Some large, some small. Some people we know, others were strangers. It was what we did, though. We served the living and the dead. Missing school was a side benefit.

Not all the deaths in my life involved wakes in our home, nor were they necessarily strangers in church. My friends, cousins, and I were the kids. Our parents were the adults, the elders. The next older generation – the eldest in the family – was dying. These were the siblings or children of those who had come over ‘on the boat.’ Aunt Kate and Uncle Bert. Uncle Tone. Aunt Sarah. Uncle Charlie. Grandma Florence. Aunt Nell. Some deaths were sudden, as sudden as can be expected when people are no longer young. Sometimes, illnesses and other circumstances preceded long, protracted deaths. Some folks were well prepared; others were ‘challenging.’  About those challenging people, my mother would often tell us, “If I ever get to be like so-and-so, just shoot me!” And of course, some were truly tragic and unexpected; this was especially the case when the departed were young. Whatever the circumstances, the mini-prayer frequently heard throughout the family was for “a speedy recovery or a happy death.” A speedy recovery or a happy death.

The list of passings goes on and on. With each one, there were wakes and funerals. There were cousins to catch up with; flowers, hams, cases of beer and bottles of Seagram 7 to deliver. Stories to tell. There was family to celebrate.

When I was in elementary school, although I did not fully realize it at the time, the elder generation began to die. It was in 4^th grade that one of my best friends lost both parents within a very short time. Jimmy’s mom had died of cancer after a long illness; his dad died of a sudden heart attack shortly after his wife’s death. These events were truly sad, and they had an impact on all of us. But we also watched as family and friends surrounded and protected Jimmy and his sisters. A lesson in what families do.

Not long after, Vin Carroll died. Vin and his wife, Elizabeth, had been part of my parents’ inner circle of friends. His death hit close to home. Again, the love, support, and rallying around of family and friends. Elizabeth, though now a widow, was never alone.

Of course, in our Irish Catholic traditions around death and dying, there were also Mass cards to deliver, Month’s Mind Masses to schedule, and anniversaries to remember. It was pretty much an ongoing process. Dying and death, though not always happy, and occasionally truly tragic, was never maudlin. Aside from wakes and funerals, there were cemetery plots to visit, to decorate with seasonal flowers, and generally maintain. This was all just a part of life. And very often, quite a bit of fun.

The fun part was not lost on my friends and me, either. We had some ideas. One of our favorite ideas centered around those prie-dieus next to the coffins. The idea was to set up voice activated prie-dieus. We thought it would be funny – and perhaps also very convenient – if, when mourners arrived casket-side and knelt down, the voice of the dearly departed would greet them saying something like, “Good of you to come.” Or “Don’t I look like myself?” We wanted to be able to watch the reactions on people’s faces and hear their replies.

Knowing the celebratory nature of wakes and funerals, we, ourselves, kept lists of people we wanted to invite to our own wakes. Actually, we kept those lists alive for years. Even in college, we’d threaten one another with being crossed off “my list.”

College brought a new memory and a new realization. It was during my first semester in college when the changes first experienced in grade school became a clear part of my life experience. When my father died that winter, I realized that my elders had become, as it were, our new eldest. My mother, Aunt Margaret to everyone else, had long been recognized as the family matriarch.  Now, though, my role in our family was also changing.  My generation was moving into the position of elders. We were the ones to now plan the wakes, arrange for the hams and beer, and make sure that there were Mass cards. “I am too young for this,” I remember thinking.

My father’s wake and funeral were powerful. For perhaps the first time, I wasn’t just watching the events unfold; I was an engaged participant. At his wake, I greeted mourners and personally accepted condolences. At home, I made space for yet another platter of cold cuts and made sure there was ice for the drinks. At church, I walked behind the coffin rather than walking ahead, carrying candles, down the aisle of church. And I shared memories and laughed through stories of his life well lived. And at the cemetery, I watched as his coffin was lowered into the grave. A happy death.

In a sudden leap back into that little room, it occurred to me that, sadly, my own children had experienced none of this. Their ‘eldest’ generation had not yet reached the time of passing. Where my peers and I had grown up living close to several generations of family and friends, my children had not. For them, the impending experience of Grandma’s dying and death would be new.

So there we sat in the small, cozy meeting room designed for confidential conversation, and potential baring of souls. I was losing my mother. The counselor, kind and well trained, had asked me a question. “Tell me,” she’d said, “Is this your first experience with death and dying?”

My split second of memories ended, and I was back. I smiled. Then chuckled. I think I even laughed.

I could see that with the laughter, the counselor was taken aback. I fell back to the smile and gathered my thoughts.

“Is this my first experience with death and dying? No,” I said, “I’m Irish. This is what we do.”