10-19-2010, 10:34 PM
On that most solemn of January mornings, the only trousers I could find were jeans. Jeans atrocious because of their simplicity, their casualness, the way they held onto my legs like a wristband at a festival. I think I did have some black slacks somewhere, but they just wouldn't fit, no matter how much I pulled like a thug on a truck; my bulk is the zipper's natural enemy. Though showing disgust at my attire, neither my father, Daniel Dunlop, nor my brother, Andrew, made much of a fuss. Said brother, in fact, was content to stop at an easy chiding - "You could have gone out and bought a new pair, Jay" - even though he sometimes still reminded me of when I was a kid, and gave my mother an old book from my room in lieu of a birthday present. Perhaps he's been storing the blue jeans disgrace until the appropriate moment, but a year has now passed since that funeral day, he lives away from home and doesn't often call, so I don't know. When my father married Susanna, the woman whose funeral we were now preparing for, I asked to be left with my maternal grandmother, and thus be excused from the ceremony. My father was in his bathrobe at the time, having just come out of the shower, and was kneeling down to knot my tie. He screamed something that I think was more complex than "no!", and I left it at that and stopped whining. Looking back, I imagine myself strangling him, suddenly enraged by his stupid outburst, and going hard with excitement as I realise his fear, like how a soldier in the first world war must feel, seconds before bayoneting a Jerry whose just stormed his trench. Now my brother was in the bathroom, ironing a shirt, and I stood in the hallway with my father to my right, on the staircase, wearing his formal black jacket, which I used to borrow for high school plays, and not one of us mentions Susanna, though we know where we're going and why, as though this were the wedding once again, and naming the bride would be bad luck. Only there's not much emotion, merely a quiet perfunctory air, like Christmas lunch at a monk house; solemn and respectful. As soon as my other brother, Cain, finished dressing, and my little half brother and sister, Bill and Sophie, Susanna's children, were ready, we drove to the crematorium. Andrew's girlfriend Carol, who he now lives with, accompanied us, and even seemed ravishing in sedate black cloth.
We were the first to get there, and we sat around until my grandparents pulled up; we climbed out and chatted with them. At one point a busload of sharp-suited drunks - Susanna's AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) friends - arrived, and my grandmother bitched about them, just like she bitches about everybody. "Where were they when she needed them?" she remarked bitterly. Where were you, I thought, but later checked myself; now that Susanna was dead, she'd have to care for my half siblings whilst my father was at work, so perhaps her annoyance was justified. Susanna's parents never showed. I think my father met them once, or he passed them by chance and they said hello, but I doubt he ever learned their names. From what I've gathered by way of titbits, her father and grandfather were both paedophiles, the latter taking pictures as the former abused, one sister killed herself with a bottle of pills, and was discovered by Susanna, and the other lives in Canada, having broken off contact with her whole family.
Finally, it was time to enter the funeral parlour, and as I was walking my uncle Simon, my father's sister Julie's husband, sidled up beside me and we exchanged platitudes.
The room was small and perfectly square, like a new music box with its innards removed. In the corner was the coffin, on a set of steel rollers before a green curtain - which hid the cooker that would fry Susanna's corpse - her blond hair, red cheeks adorning an egg white face, the result of burst capillaries, weakened by her wine intake - and reduce it to a puddle of ash - and beside this was the podium where the old vicar stood. He looked, and sounded, a lot like my high school science teacher, with his stringy white hair, thin but hunchbacked frame, and a voice which sounded like the act of merely drawing breath was much too much for him. I saw Susanna's teenage boy, Jason, from her previous relationship, weep on his father Mick's shoulder. Mick, so I've been told, is a heroin addict, but an apparently functioning one. I've heard stories about how he'd refuse her drugs, because she couldn't handle them.
The vicar prattled on about "respecting her decision," something I doubt he believed (I could see him imagining her, with all the other suicides, and gays and unwed mothers, burning in the lake of fire) and I saw my uncle Bernie's wife Charlotte, a heavily made up, whale of a woman, weeping herself red raw; her face looked like an anthropomorphic tomato. Dumb bitch, I thought. She hadn't known my stepmother, and had probably only learned her name today. But then I recalled my great-grandfather's funeral, after which Susanna had run upstairs, leapt onto her bed and cried for hours; so perhaps my aunt's histrionics were what she would have wanted, or at the very least deserved.
Once the service had ended, the vicar hit a button, the coffin disappeared behind the curtain, and we marched in single file outside, as the following mourners walked into the parlour, like a drive through restaurant. One car is served and departs, another drives up to the window. Amazingly, by the time we'd all left and been herded around the designated plot, the ashes were ready and someone was handed the urn. My father later told me that funeral parlours never burn their coffins; they take out the bodies, then sweep some pre-prepared ash inside an urn and present it to the mourners as their dead loved one. He didn't tell me what they did with the bodies.
As the little pot, allegedly containing Susanna, was buried, I looked up at my father and saw him crying. He noticed my gaze and smiled. I hate my father in many ways, hate him for mentally pistol whipping me throughout my childhood, whether or not he did it with the intent to damage, but right then I felt pity, pure and lovely as a Valentine's card. It was the first time that I'd seen him cry since I was a child, and he'd picked me up from my mother's for a visit (later on she would be sectioned, and he'd win custody), then started weeping in the car on the way to his parent's, where he was living at the time.
Now the ordeal was over, we drove to the wake at my grandmother's house, where she'd prepared a lunch of sausage rolls, sandwiches, cheese, cake, and other assorted snacks. Since our family - myself, my siblings, my father, his brother and sister and their respective partners - were the only ones there, I assume no-one else was invited, except perhaps Jason, who would have said no and stayed with his dad.
We were the first to get there, and we sat around until my grandparents pulled up; we climbed out and chatted with them. At one point a busload of sharp-suited drunks - Susanna's AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) friends - arrived, and my grandmother bitched about them, just like she bitches about everybody. "Where were they when she needed them?" she remarked bitterly. Where were you, I thought, but later checked myself; now that Susanna was dead, she'd have to care for my half siblings whilst my father was at work, so perhaps her annoyance was justified. Susanna's parents never showed. I think my father met them once, or he passed them by chance and they said hello, but I doubt he ever learned their names. From what I've gathered by way of titbits, her father and grandfather were both paedophiles, the latter taking pictures as the former abused, one sister killed herself with a bottle of pills, and was discovered by Susanna, and the other lives in Canada, having broken off contact with her whole family.
Finally, it was time to enter the funeral parlour, and as I was walking my uncle Simon, my father's sister Julie's husband, sidled up beside me and we exchanged platitudes.
The room was small and perfectly square, like a new music box with its innards removed. In the corner was the coffin, on a set of steel rollers before a green curtain - which hid the cooker that would fry Susanna's corpse - her blond hair, red cheeks adorning an egg white face, the result of burst capillaries, weakened by her wine intake - and reduce it to a puddle of ash - and beside this was the podium where the old vicar stood. He looked, and sounded, a lot like my high school science teacher, with his stringy white hair, thin but hunchbacked frame, and a voice which sounded like the act of merely drawing breath was much too much for him. I saw Susanna's teenage boy, Jason, from her previous relationship, weep on his father Mick's shoulder. Mick, so I've been told, is a heroin addict, but an apparently functioning one. I've heard stories about how he'd refuse her drugs, because she couldn't handle them.
The vicar prattled on about "respecting her decision," something I doubt he believed (I could see him imagining her, with all the other suicides, and gays and unwed mothers, burning in the lake of fire) and I saw my uncle Bernie's wife Charlotte, a heavily made up, whale of a woman, weeping herself red raw; her face looked like an anthropomorphic tomato. Dumb bitch, I thought. She hadn't known my stepmother, and had probably only learned her name today. But then I recalled my great-grandfather's funeral, after which Susanna had run upstairs, leapt onto her bed and cried for hours; so perhaps my aunt's histrionics were what she would have wanted, or at the very least deserved.
Once the service had ended, the vicar hit a button, the coffin disappeared behind the curtain, and we marched in single file outside, as the following mourners walked into the parlour, like a drive through restaurant. One car is served and departs, another drives up to the window. Amazingly, by the time we'd all left and been herded around the designated plot, the ashes were ready and someone was handed the urn. My father later told me that funeral parlours never burn their coffins; they take out the bodies, then sweep some pre-prepared ash inside an urn and present it to the mourners as their dead loved one. He didn't tell me what they did with the bodies.
As the little pot, allegedly containing Susanna, was buried, I looked up at my father and saw him crying. He noticed my gaze and smiled. I hate my father in many ways, hate him for mentally pistol whipping me throughout my childhood, whether or not he did it with the intent to damage, but right then I felt pity, pure and lovely as a Valentine's card. It was the first time that I'd seen him cry since I was a child, and he'd picked me up from my mother's for a visit (later on she would be sectioned, and he'd win custody), then started weeping in the car on the way to his parent's, where he was living at the time.
Now the ordeal was over, we drove to the wake at my grandmother's house, where she'd prepared a lunch of sausage rolls, sandwiches, cheese, cake, and other assorted snacks. Since our family - myself, my siblings, my father, his brother and sister and their respective partners - were the only ones there, I assume no-one else was invited, except perhaps Jason, who would have said no and stayed with his dad.
I'll be honest with you: This piece is just a thinly veiled version of my own life. I'm the narrator, who on the funeral day was seventeen. I agree with your comments about how a lot of details are too complex, such as "my father's sister's Julie's husband" (a sentence which, in hindsight, just looks ridiculous to me!); I got carried away with the autobiographical element, and forgot about my audience. I have tremendous trouble with prose, and have nearly killed myself constructing it before; I become so obsessive over making each line flow and look perfect, that I end up with some often hilariously convoluted, rambling passages.
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