The Wake

I've been running around all day helping Nana with the last minute preparations for the wake and the funeral. I never got a chance to show her the pictures I had enlarged, and when I brought them up before the wake, she began to cry. She went over to touch them and traced the outline of Papa's face with her fingers. I have no idea why, but I felt I had to apologize for the poor quality of the enlargements...I knew I could've done a better job if I had done them back at the office. She interrupted me and told me they were perfect. I hugged her and we both had a good cry.

Henry and I and all our cousins greeted everyone as they showed up for the wake. Relative I hadn't seen since I was little, and they all reminded me of the fact.

My uncle approached us and handed each of us a poker chip, telling us to leave it with Papa in the casket. As we made our way throught the line to view the body, everyone was leaving a chip in the casket. I joked to Henry that we should be honored that we got the black $100 chips, when many of the extended family were given the red five dollar chips.

My parents never really brought my brother and I to church vary often, so when the priest led us through the rosary, I felt a little better knowing I wasn't the only one completely lost. Perhaps one of the best things about this situation is that you can always fall back on your grief to cover for your complete ignorance of the precessions of faith.

After the wake, we all went back to Nana's (gee, it's weird to not say 'and Papa's' with that) for some leftover fried chicken and poker. To mark the occasion, we left an empty chair for Papa.

On my way to the guest room to get some sleep, I slowly passed by all the family photographs. Everyone had their own section of the wall, but I noticed that mine was the smallest one. It would be selfish as hell for me to point this out to Nana, but it's not hard to see why. I really wasn't around that much. In fact, the last photgraph was from when I was sixteen, and the only way I knew that was the fact that my hair was jet black in the photo (from a horrible goth dye-job).

Once in the room, I emptied my pockets onto the vanity and about a dollar's worth of change fell behind it. I moved the vanity away from the wall to retreive the money, but got side-tracked by a slip of paper I found. It was my father's report card from tenth grade. His GPA was almost as bad as mine back then. Papa never even got that far in school. I guess in some respects Papa was right. I'm just like my father, and his father before him.