Funeral Day, a guide
You wake up on funeral day a jumble of nerves, hoping you got all your stuff laid out properly ahead of time. Laid out; now that’s funny!
Running late, you feel anxious. Gotta get there, gotta get there, gotta get there. 80 MPH seems just about right.
You arrive. You see all these faces, you know none, yet you know them all.
Your friend is in there. These are his friends, his relatives. His parents. There are a lot of them.
This sucks. You go in.
You think about how this is not your first time, how these places are starting to look familiar, how you know the procedure. You fucking feel comfortable here, you freak. You have the whole facade broken down to its component parts: the flow, the pink light bulbs, the earnest guys with their black suits they wear five days a week, directing the maccabre show. You watch them like you watch a car crash, wondering what it’s like to be them. The precious little guest book on a pedestal with the little light and the pull chain. At some point one of the earnest guys tugs the chain and it’s lights out on the guest book; he closes it and walks off and that’s when you realize you haven’t signed it yet.
“I’ll get around to signing that”, you thought. Just like you always said you’d meet him for dinner, you’d get caught up in a flurry of email, you’d visit him in his new home city. No, no, no and no.
You stroll by the casket, you take it all in. He looks great, for a dead person. He is not there; he is someplace else. But there he is. Hi Bil! This is funny to you, this show, this effort, this dogma, and then you look up and see the massive floral arrangement atop the casket with the plastic label affixed. It says, in a jewel-encrusted cursive font, “son”. You lose it.
Where do you go from there?
You meet the family! You talk to his mom (Cassie) and his dad and his sisters, and you simultaneously admire them, and hate them, for looking exactly like him.
You make a second pass at the casket a couple hours later, and say goodbye. As you get up to leave the casket you are almost tackled by another roommate and asked to be there with her as she does the same. If it weren’t such a sad occasion you’d file this away in the all-time-greatest-moments file. You will anyway.
You go to his sister’s house, where you hang with friends from his and your life and share moments and sayings and talk about the past and the future and the present. You plan karaoke. You do not trade stock tips or talk about sports, you remember him and discuss obscure quotes from movies and comedy routines.
You read a toast from a dear friend (and yet another roommate) who could not be there. You call her before and after. She called five times throughout the day. When we did talk, it was more laughter than anything else.
Bil, where did you go? Why did you go?
What a day.
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I couldn’t be there for the funeral. I live across the country, I have two little kids, and I can’t really afford it right now. But all day long, Bil kept coming into my thoughts. I wish I could have been there with all of you.
I was going downtown with my four-year-old daughter, Ruby, on the bus to see The Nutcracker ballet, and we passed a graveyard, an old, beautiful one with lots of big trees. She asked, is that a park? And I explained to her about what a graveyard was, that there were people buried under all the stones. I’ve told her about burials before—she’s been kind of fascinated by the concept of death for a few months now, the result of reading lots of fairy tales. But seeing the graveyard made it real to her. “Are there really people under there?” “Yes, sweetie.” “Would I see them if I looked under the stones?” “No, Ruby, they bury them deep.” And my eyes filled with tears as I thought about Bil, and I explained that that was what they were doing to my friend I had told her about, and that it made me sad. She was nice. She held my hand. But I hated being 3000 miles away yesterday.
Thanks, Rob.
Donna, Dianna, Dawn, Bill T, John Genovese and I could not be there yesterday and it was hard, but not quite as hard as it was for all of you who were there. Thank you all for being there and representing Bil’s community of friends who will never be the same without him.
It was terrible and yet wonderful to see everyone on this day (though I missed the friends who could not attend.) I wondered, “where did all the years go?” Fifteen years is a long time to go without seeing a friend you once couldn’t go 15 minutes without , you know. There were the friends you did everything with there, and then the friends that took you a moment to remember, an “oh, that’s right! How are you?”, yet you can’t pinpoint a moment in time with them, which, makes you feel terribly old. And when friends start talking about this memory or that, and you join in, and then are reminded you already said that a day ago in an email, or someplace else, you start to go “Jeez. I’m REALLY getting freakin’ old”. And that was almost just as sad, facing lost time, lost memories, all on top of a lost friend, one I’ll only ever see again in my mind’s eye. Which ain’t all that bad, really, because at least it’s better to remember Bil as he was when we all knew him, and not in a serious suit that wasn’t him, with a smile that wasn’t right, unable to have the last word.
Bil was vibrant and fun, alive and bitchy, beyond hysterical and witty and needy and just completely unforgettable. I choose to remember him that way. In a Maude wig. Or as Russ Stardust. Or as Bil, just him, no act, no costume, no pretense. Just Bil.
There was nothing better than that.
Sorry I tackled you at the casket, Rob. But thanks for staying up there with me while I said goodbye to Bil.
It was such a surreal day. Weeping as I approached the casket for the first time but actually breaking a smile when I saw the floral arrangement from Family Feud. Sharing and listening intently to one hilarious Bil story after another. Looking in disbelief at Bil’s little league picture. (Bil’s deep, dark secret was that he actually played sports.) Of course, his baseball hat was turned to the side so he stood out from the other boys. Realizing he was born a clown when I saw the pic of Bil dressed as a clown on his first Halloween. Seeing how Bil’s sense of humor came from his family, his mom, sisters and that uncle who sashayed into the room of Glasssboro/NYC friends, wearing a wig and proclaiming his was Clay … Aiken maybe? We all sat there, mouths hanging open, believing we had seen a ghost. I also thought it might be an old queen making a late entrance. Mim thought maybe Bil had orchestrated this bizarre scene to have the last laugh. Either way, it was a moment that would only occur at Bil’s funeral.
It’s still so hard to say “Bil’s funeral.” Thanks again to Rob for giving us all this forum to help us get through such a rough time.
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