Funerals and greens

The power of spring after a week away, and a funeral for my mother.

Spring happened while we were in Chicago to bury my mother, and I returned to raised beds full of mustard greens, spinach, arugula, spring onions, Chinese garlic chives and … ASPARAGUS!

I have no pictures of the asparagus because I cut it for lunch the afternoon we returned, sauteed it with some spring onions and greens, added a splash each of mirin and light soy sauce, and ate it over rice. It was delicious.

It tasted of home.

It was home.

Chicago has also had a very late spring, and Thursday, after we buried my mother just outside the family mausoleum at Cavalry Cemetery with my youngest brother Michael, who died as a toddler in 1972, we went to the Field Museum for the afternoon. It was perfect. I had the chance to show Chuck the lakefront, which was resplendent with flowering trees, blue skies, a bright turquoise lake, and people enjoying the spectacular public spaces that characterize Chicago. We took a little detour to see the building where my mother grew up, right next to Francis Parker School where my grandmother worked for 60 years, where my aunt taught for 30. We saw a few more buildings in which I lived with the parents who kept moving and moving and moving. We saw where my great grandparents lived. We drove down Lake Shore Drive with the city skyline gleaming above us and pulled into that row of gorgeous buildings: the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium. The museum was great — groups of manic schoolchildren, towering dinosaurs, some cool gold artifacts from the Balkans, lots of Native American exhibits, and thankfully, some wonderfully old-fashioned wooden cases with meteorites and mineral samples, and the Hall of Birds where yes, they’re all taxidermied, but as the sign points out, they’ve been dead a long time. It was a good end to the week of my mother’s funeral.

Which was perfect. It was exactly how I wanted it to be. My cousins Dede and Elizabeth did the readings, and my friend of 40 years (and platonic prom date) Greg, who knew and loved my mom, did the first eulogy, then I said my piece, and then the really lovely, smart and funny Episcopalian rector who I’d met with earlier in the week gave a homily that hit just the right note of thoughtful piety without being pious.

I’ve been reading Ross Gay’s new book, and I talked about his thesis that joy is not the absence of sorrow, but joy is what emerges from our entanglment with one another. Joy is how we carry one another through our sorrows. My mother was not great at many things including sobriety and being supportive of me, but she was very good at entanglement. My mother understood the power of visiting. She knew everyone’s story, and how they were connected, and she understood that when trouble comes, we can’t forestall it, but we can gather together, and keep one another company through our sorrows. My mother, like Ross Gay, knew that joy was collective. And so, on a beautiful spring Wednesday, in a church absolutely bedecked with flowers chosen by her oldest friend who could not be there with us, we did just that. We prayed that if there is a G-d, they are the G-d that Sister Bremner taught me was infinitely wise, and just, and loving — and in whom we can trust to relieve us of the burdens of our shortcomings, and welcome us into the kingdom.

And then everyone moved into the Parish Hall and ate the delicious lunch. There were people who hadn’t seen one another in years. There were my cousins, brothers who don’t get along but who forgot that, and spent the entire afternoon, with their wives, all at one table telling stories. I saw people I haven’t seen in ages and talked nonstop and there was a lot of hugging and kissing and some crying. It was perfect.

The next morning, my 93 year old godmother Daphne, and my cousin Dede, and Chuck and I met our priest friend at the cemetery, and buried my mother along with the ashes of her beloved dog Charlie. With my brother Michael. And we all took a moment and really thought, in the most tender terms, about what it meant for my mother, for all of us, to lose Michael all those decades ago. And then to lose Patrick 30 years later. And for me to have now lost all of them. Then Daphne and Dede went off to their family plot to visit for a minute with the baby their family lost, and Chuck and I got in the car, drove down the beautiful lakeshore, and went to the museum.

So to come home to my garden full of mustards and broccoli rabe and the spring walking onions I adore, and then on top of it all, my first real asparagus spears, some fat ones, some tall skinny ones, all emerging from the crowns I planted 3 years ago, well, it made me grateful. Grateful for the people who came to be with me last week, and 20 years ago when we buried Patrick, and 50 years ago when we buried Michael, and for how we all remain entangled, despite time and distance.

And it made me grateful to be home, in my house and my garden, with my dog and my cats and my chickens. And my lovely partner. Here in Montana where there’s sunshine beginning to peek through the clouds, and the fruit trees and the lilacs are getting ready to bloom, and where I have spent 20 years building a life that very much works. That simple lunch of sauteed greens and asparagus and rice, it tasted of joy, and gratitude.