Gramps was buried in Westford, and Granny died in Atlanta. So transporting her ashes would be challenging. Human remains were hell to send through the mail.
Since I’d driven down from North Carolina, I was the only person in Atlanta who absolutely had to drive to the funeral. Everyone else had the option to fly. So it was ultimately decided that I would road trip the ashes back home to Vermont. The family even paid for new tires for my car, taking the money out of Granny’s estate.
My family called it the “Highway to Heaven” tour. They were playing on the 1980 TV show by the same name, in which Micheal Landon played an angel. Privately there were jokes about me befriending overweight truckers along the way, and snapping photos with both them and my Grandmother’s urn of cremains. Publicly, as always, we Warners were less cheeky.
I left the next day. I don’t remember a single moment of the trip, until I crossed the Vermont state border. Then I remember almost every second of it. I remember the feel of the wind as I drove. I remember the look of the trees, which seemed poised, despite the warmth, to begin changing color and dropping their leaves. [bxA]
In the town next to Westford, there’s a funeral home run by the Minors, an old Westford family. Stephen Minor, the owner, met me when I arrived. The Minors and the Warners were never terribly close, but I remember a story about the older siblings of the two families: they used to play tetherball together. Steve Minor had a dog named Penny, and she, too, did her part in the tetherball games. She would jump up and bite the tetherball as it passed, then hang on and sail around in a circle. This provided no end of enjoyment for those involved.
Steve Minor had a kind face, and a warm smile. Just knowing this small story made me feel as if I was arranging a reunion of Westford’s old guard. “Is this Irene?” he asked, as I handed him the box containing her urn. I nodded, and he took it gently, saying “We’ll take good care of her.” And I believed him.
I got back in the car. I had other stops to make.
I remember what it felt like to drive past the covered bridge. This town was home, although I’d never lived here. I drove to the corner on which the General Store stood.
The General Store was run by Kevin and Suzie Kerns. Back when Suzie Kerns was Suzie Poulliot, she used to babysit my father and his siblings, literally going along on family vacations to help with the care of all 10 Warner kids.
I didn’t know this at the time, and Kevin and Suzie have the reserve typical of New Englanders. So we didn’t exchange many words. I bought a swisher sweet cigar and a Diet Coke. After my Aunt Kim arrived, she made sure to stop in and see the Kerns. From her I’d eventually learn that, as I was walking up to the store, Kevin turned to Suzie and said, “Well, I know he’s a Warner. I just don’t know who he belongs to.”
That was the first time in my adult life that I’d been recognized, by a stranger, as a member of my father’s family. To come back to the seat of the entire family narrative, and be recognized, on sight, as a part of it, affected me profoundly.
That was, of course, after reflection. For the moment I was standing there in the Westford General Store with relative strangers. I paid for the swisher and the soda, and set my sights to where my grandfather was buried 13 years before. I didn’t go to the funeral, and had never seen his gravestone. As his wife was about to be buried by his side, I thought, it was high time to do so.
Graveside, I did three things. For Granny, I prayed a rosary. The family had given me the beads she died holding, and those were the beads I used that day. For Gramps, I lit up the swisher, blowing the smoke on his grave because I figured he missed the smell. For me, as I’d been driving most of the day, I downed the diet coke in record time, grateful to feel a bit more awake. One of the old women of Westford stopped by to express condolences as I was standing there, making clear the town’s awareness of the passing of one of their own.The days leading up to the funeral were full of reunions. My Pop and his siblings began to trickle in, and stories long relegated to memory came out of their mouths, easy as exhalation. The townswomen put on a covered dish supper and everyone came. I met the Larsons of my generation who were still in town, and noticed that one of my grandfather’s paintings still hung on the walls of the Red Brick Church, long ago converted to a meeting hall.
My last act as transporter of Granny’s ashes was to bear the urn down the main aisle at the start of her funeral. To this day I am proud to have seen that task through to its end.
Funerals are heavy anyway, but I felt again the need to lighten up as the funeral progressed. Earlier on I’d returned to Kevin and Suzie’s, and bought a new pack of Swishers. I had them in my pocket at the funeral. As Granny’s ashes were being interred, I passed the pack around on the sly to uncles and aunts, all of whom recognized Gramp’s brand and drew out a stogie with a smile.
I fished through my pocket for my lighter, and had it in my hand as I made the final Sign of the Cross. Before long, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins were all incensing the graves with a scent that forever held Gramp’s memory.
What I didn’t know is, as I was road-tripping with Granny’s ashes, my Aunt Kim was getting in touch with the family who lived in the old Warner homestead. They were generous enough to invite every one of us, with apologies for the mess, to come by after the internment.
So, with the stubs of Swisher Sweets in many of our mouths still, we travelled to the house. They’d cut down the Crab Apple tree that whomever was sleeping in the second floor bedroom could use to sneak out of the house. And they’d filled in the swimming pool into which my uncles and aunts used to jump from the first floor roof that extended over the deck. So the house had lost some of its capacity to incite mischief. But even as I walked through the kitchen, I knew that all of the pipes had been laid by my grandfather. In the corner of the living room, at one point, the family had kept a television. Its life was cut short the day my Pop came into the room screaming “CAPTAIN KANGAROO” as the program was starting. He felt, for some reason, compelled to deliver a high karate kick to the air, after which gesture his shoe came off, flying into the television and breaking it. Suffice to say, the family’s past was everywhere.
After the funeral, the family dispersed. I drove back to South Bend long enough to do laundry, en route back to Mepkin for a longer stay. After my encounter with Westford, South Bend, and indeed every town I drove into, was different. After that trip I knew where I’d come from. I’d helped my Granny come to rest. And, more than I had before the journey, I knew who I was. I was a Warner. I’d been the courier. And I would become, in my own way, a custodian of the fragment of family story that I’d learned over those days.
V.
I returned to the Monastery with grieving to do. At this point I was what they called an observer: someone who has declared an interest in joining the community. As such, I’d been assigned a director, a priest named Fr. Feliciano. Monasteries are tremendous at helping people to mourn, for those willing to see that there’s grieving to. The routine, and its monotony, simultaneously supports the one living it and leaves no distraction between a man and his emotions. The monks used to say “In a monastery, if you’re struggling, you can get through it by simply living the routine.” I found this to be true, but I also found living it richer and harder to bear than I’d anticipated.
It’s said that two of Jesus’ disciples, after his death, initially fled Jerusalem in despair. They came upon, and began travelling with, a stranger, to whom they revealed their disappointment that Jesus had not risen as he said he would. As they walked toward the town of Emmaus, their conversation wandered onto interpretation of the Torah, and the stranger’s comments were insightful enough to impress the disciples. Later, as the three dined, the stranger blessed the bread and broke it. The gesture so poignantly brought back the memory of their deceased Rabbi that the disciples literally felt the stranger to be Jesus himself. So they began to proclaim him risen all over Galilee.
I’ve said before that Granny and Gramps were the key to my faith being more than pie-in-the-sky stories. In fact, I think the story of Emmaus is literally true, and I think that because something similar happened to me.
In the monastery, grief took up temporary but real residence in the center of my chest. I was constantly tense, for reasons it took years to attribute to grieving, but reasons which were a mystery at the time.
I talked about this with a few monks. For one, I spoke about it with Br, Vincent, one of Mepkin’s blessed eccentrics who would become, by and by, one of my closest friends there. I told him the story of Granny’s Westford funeral, of incensing the graves with the smoke of Swisher Sweet Cigars.
“Oh hey,” Vince said “I should have guessed that a man as classy as your grandfather would smoke cigars. Come with me.”
I followed Vince. He guided me to his room, a cluttered thing with every inch of wall space covered in posters, some of which were homemade. He fished around in his desk drawer and produced a swisher sweet cigar. He said “Next Sunday, I want you to take a stroll around the farm. Smoke this cigar, and remember your Grandparents.”
I was stymied. “Vin,” I said, “How is it that you even have this?” Shouldn’t these be impossible to get in here?”
Vincent grinned “I suppose they should be hard to get, but they’re not. Often the monks have friends who bring them gifts when they come to visit. If you went through the rooms of some of us old guys you’d find many of them have whole drawers full of cookies. Some of the monks keep back a little bit of ‘unaccounted-for’ money, so as to go out for cheeseburgers when they’re out at the dentist without turning in a receipt for it and tipping off the powers that be. It can have its pitfalls…Mepkin’s black market could be a way for, say, an alcoholic monk to get his hands on a bottle. That’s happened in a couple of cases at some of the other Trappist houses. But usually its more innocent than that. So everyone knows it goes on, and everyone looks the other way.”
Mepkin Abbey, then, that vanguard of holiness, had a black market. This knowledge was delicious to me, but it aggravated my bad case of the scruples as well. Being in possession of contraband was something that my neophyte conscience couldn’t bear to keep from my director, so when I next met with Fr. Feliciano, I told him I had it. I was lucky on two counts. For one thing, he didn’t ask me to reveal my source. Additionally, he didn’t ask me to surrender it. The whole thing seemed entirely unsurprising to him.
“You should smoke it slowly.” Fr. Feliciano said. “Be deliberate, and make it a prayer.”
So it happened that I partook of a contraband swisher. On this walk I admitted to myself that throughout the funeral, I’d held myself together, at least in part, by force. I’d gotten through Granny’s death on a mix of caffeine and adrenaline. Given the energy denial takes, merely admitting this relaxed me. This presaged my realizing that the cycle of overwork and burnout could eclipsed generosity for me, but it would be years before that concretized.
Out of the blue, on that walk, I found myself talking: to no one, at first. And the words were all about exhaustion. Then I heard myself address him:“Gramps,” I said, “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know how to balance all the things I need to balance. I don’t know how to be generous. And I don’t know who I am, or how to live my life well. Please help me. Please help.”
The words rolled out calmly, when they came. And it may be that Gramps really wasn’t there. He didn’t appear to me. But neither had the words been there, the ones I really needed to say, until I said them to him. That prayer, I decided, was proof of his intercession.
I need to diverge a bit and describe something about Granny, because it’s important to understanding the conclusion of this story. Granny had a particular smile, and something she’d say when she was trying to express astonishment. The smile had notes of feigned haughtiness in it: she’d move her head back over her shoulders and stick out her chest a bit. And she always said the same words: “How ‘bout that?”
I say this because later, I narrated the whole stogie walk for Fr. Feliciano. I ended saying “So, in the end, I feel a lot better, thanks a lot.”
“Ah,” he said, “God works in mysterious ways. How ‘bout that?”
Something happened at this point, something difficult to explain. When Feliciano said “how ‘bout that?” he squared his head over his shoulders and stuck out his chest a bit. And when he spoke the words, I was suddenly aware that I was not looking at Feliciano anymore. I was looking at Granny. I suppose I didn’t see her the way my Uncle David saw Gramps. But I was as certain of her presence as I was of my own. If it is possible to see with something other than my eyes, in that moment I most certainly saw Granny. At that point, the immediate grief of Granny’s death was easier to bear.
At one point in the Gospels, Jesus reveals to an adulterous woman that he knows about her 5 husbands, that nothing she’s done shocks him and that he won’t reject her for her choices.
The woman goes to a neighboring town and relates the incident to the people. They invite Jesus to remain with them for a few days, and by the end of their time with him, they say, “We no longer believe because we were told. We have seen and believe that you are the Messiah.”
I no longer believe because I was told. I believe because I have seen. I believe because an old, stogie chomping construction worker started making house calls when his kids needed it. I believe because, even as I am writing this, he is helping me find the words. I believe because his wife was a gentle, story-rich presence and still is.
Gramps created a family symbol, one he made into medals. When he married Granny he gave her a medal, and when she died the medals were given to the grandkids. I never took mine off. The medal’s hole was only large enough for a thin chain, though, and those broke, so I lost my family medal. This was towards the end of my monastic life, during the period when my relationship with the monastery was shifting. I briefly discussed it with the abbot. Perhaps he saw my departure from the monastery as the writing on the wall, because I made a suggestion, and for whatever reason, he gave his blessing.In any case, some months later I went into town for a doctor’s appointment, and stopped by a tattoo parlor to have the family symbol tattooed on my right forearm.
In the Jewish confession of faith, it says “take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today. Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest. Bind them as a frontlet on your forehead, as a symbol on your arm.”
And again, saint John Chrysostom said something like “Those whom we have loved and lost are no longer where they were. They are now where we need them to be.” When Granny sent that poem she found in my grandfather’s wallet, the one written by my father, her accompanying note asked me to “Remember those who went before [me], and what they gave of themselves.” All of the words, all of the stories, and the evolving sense of who I am, they’re now a part of my embrace. Like those in the stories, by now the words are where I need them to be. Here, now. And by and by, God willing, fully told.
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