Late last Saturday morning I stepped out into the sunshine and on to the front porch to collect the mail, and I heard some piano off in the distance.
Looked around and saw my mother sitting out on her porch, reading something.
Thirty-five years ago when her and my father bought that porch and the house that went along with it, I never would have imagined I’d be living across the street, a lot of wear and tear on me, four kids and married twice, but here we are.
I walked across the street and up the stairs of her porch.
She had a bunch of papers in a folder.
“Look at this,” she said, reaching out with a small piece of brown newsprint.
Her niece had visited the day before and brought some papers belonging to her mother, my mother’s sister, who passed away last year.
“She said she wasn’t even sure what was in there but she thought I might want to have the stuff. There was a CD of your uncle playing piano and this and some other stuff.”
“I thought I heard piano,” I said.
“It’s my father’s anniversary.”
“Ah. I didn’t know it was the fourth. I knew it was early September.”
I looked down at the paper she had given me. Clipped from a local newspaper decades ago.
“It’s a description of my brother’s funeral.”
I read it. Told his address, the same one I lived at many years later; gave the name of the officiant, the pallbearers, the readings, the songs the congregation sang.
“Ave Maria,” I said under my breath.
I long ago left behind the religious trappings of my youth, but damn if that song, sung the right way, can still put a chill down my spine.
“I’m gonna read those readings later, listen to those songs.” She paused.
“Reading that note in the paper, I...I really can’t remember almost any of it.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember much from Lauren’s funeral??”
“Not much. I remember a second or two before doing the eulogy, looking out at the crowd. And leaving the cemetery with Bailey.”
We both paused.
“I just remember at the graveside. He was military, they all got drafted back then you know.”
“I know, Ma.”
“I remember them playing Taps.”
&&&&
My youngest daughter turned ten yesterday. I can’t remember many birthdays from my youth, but I remember turning ten vividly. Thought getting into the double digits was a big deal. Still remember one of my folks’ friends, sitting at our kitchen table, smiling at me and saying, “double digits now! Congratulations!” I felt like the king of the world. I felt like a grown-up.
So did she.
She’s in to cooking and baking and set about to making her own birthday cake (with a little adult assistance, of course), red velvet with a frosting made out of buttercream mixed with some sort of strawberry jam. Wore the little baking apron my Mom gave her, it was my Mom’s when she was a kid.
At some point in the proceedings the top layer of the cake collapsed. She put a lot of effort into it and to see it collapse like that was tough to watch, and she needed a little time to get over it.
I told her someday she’ll have her own bakery and she’ll make me a carrot cake for my seventieth birthday. fifteen years from now, and I’ll love it.
&&&&
Called her this morning to touch base about the party this afternoon. She could tell I was in a hurry.
I just gotta tell ya something quick.
She went out for her walk in the morning, went up to the cemetery.
“I talked to your father, I talked to Lauren.”
She’d been half-listening to some broadcast of a 9/11 memorial service going on somewhere.
She decided to walk over to her brother’s gravestone. As she walked up, she heard the sound of Taps coming through the headphones.
“I didn’t even cry. I knew it was my brother.”