Occasional Jots and Tittles

So, this morning, I met my parents and my sister at the funeral home where my aunt’s body will be cremated. Her three younger children were all there as well; the funeral home asked if we wanted some private time for the family to see her one last time before the cremation, since the funeral won’t be until Monday.

All in all, this funeral home has done a good job for us in the past, but I had a mild beef with them. Granted, we weren’t having a full-scale wake there, so I didn’t expect a big fuss. Because of the cremation, they didn’t have to buy a casket – so there wasn’t one. I can understand that. But the funeral home had laid out the body on a hospital-type gurney, with nothing draped over it to cover the chrome metal legs or the wheels or anything. And her body was just covered by a plain white hospital-type sheet. If it weren’t for the fact that the private viewing was held in one of the “parlors” in the funeral home, I’d have thought we were in a morgue.

Granted, my aunt was a simple woman who liked simple things. She wanted the cremation and she wanted no big fuss. But I honestly think the funeral home could invest in a simple black tailored drape to put over the stretcher for situations like this.

Afterwards, my parents and I went out to check on my mothers’ parents tombs and her other siblings’ graves nearby. All were in good condition although (naturally) flowers had been swiped from one of the graves. My aunt’s ashes will be buried in the grave with one of her nieces, who’s also in this group. My parents and I have graves across the cemetery.

You’d think, with a family like mine, we’d have a family vault or a big family plot somewhere. And we do. One of each, in fact. But the vault is across the river and down about 20 miles, where my great-grandfather was the last to be buried; after his death, the family picked up and moved to Baton Rouge, where they purchased a large family plot. Buried there are my great-grandmother and five of her 11 children. But the remainder of the plot is empty, due to a dispute between some of those children (when still alive) and my grandfather, their brother-in-law, as to the ownership. He and his oldest sister-in-law had pooled resources in 1945 to buy the plot, when Great-grandma died, so that there would be ample room for all the unmarried sisters as well as his wife (their sister) and their kids. Naturally, of course, the transaction was only recorded in my great-aunt’s name, and after her death, the sisters insisted that the plots all belonged to her.

My grandfather basically said, using far more polite language, “Fuck you” and bought their tombs in another cemetery. So to this day, the remainder of our family plot in the old cemetery here sits unused. No living member of the family really wants to be buried there. So I’ve suggested a solution dripping with poetic justice; the old aunts buried there were dear family, but also typical for their era – racial and ethnic bigots from day one, where no person of color could enter through their front door. The gravesites are now owned by my mother and some of her cousins, nieces and nephews as inherited property, so I suggest they donate them to the church for the burial of indigent black people, leaving them side-by-side for eternal rest. The churning should produce enough power to light a small city.

We haven’t eaten out in a long while, for a number of reasons – chief among them that Jonathan has mostly wanted to hibernate at home lately. But he felt more outgoing this evening so we went out to eat. Since I’ve eaten out on my own a bit lately or with friends, I let him pick, so we ended up at Macaroni Grill – which, by all rights, shouldn’t be a bad compromise between my preference for local eateries with distinctive cuisine and his hankering for predictability.

But this is Macaroni Grill we’re talking about, and it’s often a comedy of errors to eat there. Tonight was no exception. We’re seated, our waiter writes his name upside down on the paper on the table, and takes our drink orders. He returns with the drinks and takes the meal orders – we each get a “Trio”, which includes a salad, a slightly smaller portion of one of several entrees, and a dessert.

We then watch as others are seated and their waiters (including, sometimes, ours) bring them the standard bread and olive oil. When our waiter returned to refill my drink, I asked about the bread. He surveyed the table and for a moment gave us that “OK, did you eat the plates as well as the bread?” look before realizing I meant we hadn’t gotten any yet. He apologized, took my glass, and said he’d be right back with it.

30 seconds later, he’s back with the bread, but no drink. Next pass by the table, Jonathan asked him about my drink. He looked at me, snapped his fingers, and went back to get it.

About five minutes later, he comes out with two steaming hot plates of food. What he put in front of me was clearly meant for Jonathan, so he swapped the plates, and left. After about three bites, Jonathan commented, “You know, this is the strangest tasting salad…” Yep, he’d forgotten the salads. And the plates looked suspiciously large. And mine, while tasty, was awfully spicy for the fettucine alfredo I’d ordered — and I’d never known that recipe to use sun-dried tomatoes. Not to mention that mine had big penne pasta in it instead of flat noodles.

We stopped the waiter again, and asked if there was an issue with the salads. He gets that familiar “oh shit” look on his face we’ve come to recognize, and we pointed out that we think our plates are probably the full entree size, not the “Trio” reduced size. He agreed. Then as I was pointing down at my plate, he said “And I think you have the wrong dish, that’s Penne Rusticana and not Fettucini Alfredo.”

By this point, we were almost laughing at him, because he was clearly flustered (he later mentioned he’d been working since early that morning and he was a little spacey). But the bigger dishes of food, as far as we were concerned, outweighed the lack of salads, and I was just as happy with what I got as what I’d ordered. So we told him to just leave it all, and we would be happy with it.

A few moments later, we overheard a waiter at another table nearby, who’d brought out four of five entrees for that group, tell the fifth person “Your Penne Rusticana should be out in just a moment. It takes a little longer to fix than the other dishes.” Nice cover, but bullshit, I’m sure that I got her dish when our waiter grabbed the wrong one.

Still, we got our desserts, and considering the entrees we did get should have cost more than the Trios we ordered, we came out considerably ahead. But as I tell people, you never know what your’e going to get when you order there.

Once, a group of eight of us went there for my birthday. The waiter brought out the food – seven entrees. He served them around, disappeared for about five minutes, and then came back to see “if we needed anything else.” I raised my hand, pointed at the empty table in front of me, and said “Yes, food.” That dreaded “oh shit” look came over him, he scurried to the computer, and realized he hadn’t put my order in. They hurriedly worked up mine, which was marginal being rushed, and then had the gall to charge full price for it.

This time, at least, our waiter was apologetic at every step, and I know what it’s like to work when you’re exhausted. And as I said, we came out ahead, with more food and less salad, plus (essentially) free desserts, so we gave him my usual full tip.

My mother’s last sister died this morning. She was six years younger, but with the slough of health problems she’s had over the last fifteen or so years, she looked at least ten years older. Worse, the last time I saw her, at my cousin’s funeral last fall, she had that look of death about her – she just looked gray all over.
She was my godmother, and when I was younger, she did several things for me that I still remember. As she got older, she weathered a late pregnancy, a divorce while raising a very young child, financial collapse, and then, as things were looking up for her with a new job and a new home, kidney failure and two bouts with cancer. I know she was in discomfort most of the time, and considerable pain sometimes, but she really didn’t complain very much.

Her passing leaves my mother as the sole member of her generation in her immediate family, and the oldest in her generation across her extended family. What makes that hard to imagine, I suppose, is that being south Louisiana Catholics, she and my father both come from generations of big families. Her parents were each one of 11 children, and my dad’s mother was also one of 11 (his father was raised Baptist so there were only four in that family). My mom was one of four, my dad one of seven, and in my generation alone, I have 31 first cousins. I can’t begin to even count the first cousins once removed, the second cousins, and so forth.

My father’s also the oldest in his immediate family as well; his three older siblings and one younger sister have died, leaving him with only the two youngest, who are much younger than he is. Both my mother and father are in excellent health, and we have no reason to believe they won’t be around a lot longer – but they’ll be 75 and 74 soon, and at that age, “a lot longer” becomes a relative term.

Later this summer, in June, my parents will have been married fifty years – a first as far as we know in either line of the family, not because of divorces but because very few couples among our ancestors lived that long. We’d originally planned to have a big get-together with all our living relatives but we’re leaning now towards something with just us four kids, our families, and the cousins who are fairly close by, given how many closer relatives we’ve lost in recent years. It’s a sobering thought.