death at a funeral

Since my birth, my grandmother had always been there, living a few hours away from my mother and me in Florida, coming to Connecticut for my brother’s wedding, and breaking dishes in my aunt’s kitchen in California. My memories of her are so obscure that I sometimes have trouble believing it was the same woman. My sister, eighteen years my senior often tells me stories of activities our grandmother taught her and while I can still smell her stuffed shells, I couldn’t tell you much about the woman underneath the apron. Once, she brought me to her bedroom and provided me with the coolest outfit I had ever worn. Living on a street of boys and not at all lady like girls, I had developed quite the tomboy persona, refusing to wear any dresses that were too form fitting, or wouldn’t twirl perfectly in the wind. The outfit my grandmother gave me was in the design of a sunflower and the top was a spaghetti strap, the bottom was the equivalent of biker shorts. Finally, my outfit was fully functional and I looked cute to boot. I don’t remember how I reacted when she gave me the clothes; I’m not very good at expressing emotion when given a present but I know that outfit bonded us forever. When I visited both her and my aunt in California, my cousins were nothing short of beating the shit out of the woman. I crawled up next to her and blocked us with pillows while they shot water guns and threw couch pillows in our faces, screaming profanities all the while. I asked myself what kind of mongrels would hurt this beautiful woman, but apparently the joke was on me because she loved their perverse affection. I think that’s what started my confusion as to how relationships worked.

Here I stood, in my hometown with my whole family surrounding us, minus my mother, and I couldn’t feel more distant from the woman who had given me the sunflower clothes while my two cousins cried like little babies.