March 30, 2009
time travel is exhausting
This weekend, I flew to Pittsburgh for a family funeral; my 92-year-old great aunt passed away last week. This was the good kind of funeral, if there is such a thing, the kind of funeral where mourning the deceased means laughing until you cry about that time that you and your brother nearly got into a fight in the restaurant parking lot because neither of you wanted to ride in the front seat if Aunt Ish was driving.
That sort of thing.
My aunt was a beautician (does anyone even use that word any more?) in a small town outside of Pittsburgh. For years, she did the hair on the corpses at the funeral home, before they were laid out for the viewing. The mortician (is that word still around?) told my mother that Ish would come to the funeral home for a 20 minute job and sit around and visit for an hour afterward. He also said she used to joke with him: “When I die, you’d better make me look beautiful.” They did.
Ish left my mother a diamond ring; the men at the funeral home remembered Ish wearing it, all those years ago. “You know where she got the money to buy herself that big diamond?” they asked my mother. “Working here!”
Funerals are like traveling through time; you spend a day or two reviving this just-ended life, talking about other long-dead family and friends, and piecing together one story, about the deceased, which of course is really so many different stories, all tangled up together. This weekend the story was about my mother’s aunt Ish, but then of course it was also about Ish’s brother, Huck, who was my mother’s father and who died when she was nine, and about Ish’s husband, George, who helped my grandmother raise my mother and her siblings after their father died, and about my mother’s sister, Sue, who lived through all that with my mother and then died very suddenly nine years ago.
This weekend was also like traveling back in time because Butler, the little Pennsylvania town where my aunt lived for so many years, has the air of being frozen in the past, somewhere in the 1950s. The funeral home looks like something out of a John O’Hara short story, with floral wallpaper and white wainscotting and elaborate crown molding. On Saturday, before the funeral, my brother and I walked up Main Street, to pass the time before the viewing (a very 1950-something tradition, I think) and we stopped in an antique store, him in his jacket and tie and me in my Audrey Hepburn LBD, and browsed furniture and pictures and nick nacks as though we were just out for the day shopping and strolling, but all dressed up for church. We must have looked like something from the 50s there, too.
I have some funny stories from the weekend, because my family is always good for the funny, but I’m tired from going all the way back to 1950, to my aunt’s youth. It was a long trip.
And a sad one, in the end, although in a good way.
Posted by Susan @ 9:18 pm • good people
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March 30th, 2009 at 10:28 pm, Shara Says:
My ex-in-laws (lots of hyphens in that one) have funerals like that. It is a time to celebrate the life gone, relive old family stories, notice how much older everyone else has gotten (just not you). In the Preston/Huggins clan, there is a lot of laughing and crying. It really is a bittersweet time. Thanks for sharing this.
March 31st, 2009 at 7:11 am, Shannon Says:
This same thing happened to me in January. My great-aunt was 86, and she lived in a tiny town stuck in the past too, but in a sweet, nostalgic, comforting sort of way. I felt the same sense of going back in time, laughing and crying and experiencing new appreciation for my large extended family.
My condolences.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:46 am, Sarah @ BecomingSarah.com Says:
I can relate to this 100%. My great-aunt Edna passed away last summer. She was 100 years old and even though it was a sad event, it was sad in a good way. She lived a long and fulfilling life and we enjoyed remembering.
But it was exhausting too. My great-aunt came from a small town in Illinois and visiting was like walking into a time machine, with real historical characters and old black-and-white pictures of people long forgotten.
I’m so very sorry for your loss. In a sad way, but in a good way too.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:29 pm, Nelson's Mama Says:
Southern funerals are certainly something to be enjoyed, it’s true that “laughter through tears” is our favorite emotion.
Sometimes they are heartwrenching, but you can always count on hearing wonderful stories about crazy family members, eating the MOST amazing food and leaving knowing that you are loved.
March 31st, 2009 at 2:17 pm, Sue @ My Party of 6 Says:
In my family, the older generation calls a funeral homes “corpse houses,” a phrase in which my generation finds much amusement. And although it seems that my brothers and cousins and I are meeting far too often in corpse houses these days, I definitely understand what you mean about the good kind of funeral ~ celebrating a long life, well-lived.
I still cry though, which leads me back to the great waterproof mascara search…
March 31st, 2009 at 2:20 pm, J from Ireland Says:
That sounds fairly typical of an Irish wake but with alcohol, of course.
May your Aunt Ish rest in peace.
Oh and Beautitican is certainly still used, well over in these parts anyway
March 31st, 2009 at 6:40 pm, Adri Says:
My mother-in-law doesn’t like coming over for family holidays because we always bring up the same old family stories. We do it every single holiday. We’re weird that way.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:50 pm, Article Submission Says:
laughing and crying and experiencing new appreciation for my large extended family.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:16 am, Holli Says:
Butler, PA - I was born there. My parents were both from East Brady. Small world
April 1st, 2009 at 7:07 pm, aimee Says:
I love funerals like that. Really. Oh, and I’ve been to Butler…for my cousin’s wedding.
April 1st, 2009 at 9:03 pm, Rod Says:
I grew up in Pittsburgh, so I know Butler, too, and I moved back there with my family for a number of years. Allegheny County, which surrounds Pittsburgh, just south of Butler and Butler County, has the oldest population in the US outside of Dade County, FL. and I’m pretty sure Butler shares a similar demographic. As your aunt’s generation passes on these funerals are becoming a growth industry in the region. It’s a part of the country that was once the Silicon Valley of it’s day and the loss of so much of it’s industrial base is a similar sadness to what you recently experienced, only one experienced by an entire population. Very sad, but places age and change too.