Every family has one.
9:12 p.m.
The drive was actually quite lovely. The trees are just putting out their new leaves and the forest is rather beautiful with different soft shades of green contrasting with the dark pines and spruces. The texture as well is different now than it will be later in the season, a softness that will be replaced with more crisp edges. We had sunshine all the way, until dusk of course, and our windshield was resplendent with the splatters of unfortunate insects.
On Saturday we rose very early and made our way to the funeral home, arriving much sooner than hoped or dreamed, at around 10:30, which meant we had an hour and-a-half to stand around and talk to relatives. It actually wasn�t so bad. The widow was doped up slightly and was much cheerier than she should have been. Her sons were also in pretty good spirits, except for the youngest who had been closest to his step-dad. This family history actually makes for a pretty good story.
My husband�s aunt, his mom�s youngest sister, was 16 when she met and got pregnant by the man who became her first husband. My mother-in-law had just married my father-in-law (there�s a 10-year age difference here) and had my oldest brother-in-law (who didn�t come to the funeral). The two families lived together until both women were pregnant with their third sons, and the younger sister moved out. Between the two of them, my mother-in-law likes to relate, they wore a hole through a ringer washing machine.
The aunt proceeded to have five sons before she finally left her husband, who was a sleaze bucket extraordinaire (he got another 16-year-old pregnant by this time) and had to wait through the lengthy separation then required by law before she could be granted a divorce. During this time the man who became her second husband was noticing her, she was quite attractive, still is for that matter, and some friends set them up, and the rest is history. They married, he adopted the boys, and was a model husband and father. Unfortunately, except for the youngest, the boys did not benefit that much from his example. The oldest has been married three times, the next oldest died in a car crash, leaving a wife and young children (he had been taking pain medication and was not wearing his seatbelt), the third just lost his third wife to his erstwhile business partner who cheated him out of everything, and the two youngest, after seeing the mess their older brothers made of their marriages decided never to marry. The next-to-youngest has a girlfriend, and the youngest now has a lovely wife of three years, and I think that one is going to stick.
The funeral was tedious to the max, but then I find most religious ceremonies fall into that category. The eulogy was spoken by the former chief of police who had worked with the deceased and had quite a few good stories to tell. I was filled in on the details later so I can relate them here. My husband�s uncle had a towing and auto-body business and was considered an expert witness in his field, often called into court to testify how an accident had occurred. One of the most gruesome parts of his job was the extraction of dead crash victims from wrecks. This is why the police practically made his shop into a second precinct.
The reception following was quite nice. I sat with one of my husband�s aunts and uncles, the ones who fancy themselves musicians (they both sing in barbershop groups). Another of his aunts kept remarking on how I hadn�t changed in all the years since she�d seen me, and then proceeded to give me her recipe for keeping my youthful good looks into old age. Mix one egg yolk with 2 to 3 drops of olive oil, spread on your freshly cleaned visage and let dry, remaining expressionless the whole time, then wash off with lukewarm water and pat dry. I haven�t tried it yet. We shall see. She also said that you should eat 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed daily to keep your hair gleaming. Okay. I bet it�ll keep you regular too.
We had our own bit of near-death drama that morning. We were headed west on the 401, having just left my mom�s place, when the cellphone rang. That�s always an event, considering it�s usually turned off. It was my mother-in-law wanting to give us some extra directions to the funeral home, so Hubby reached into the door side pocket to get the envelope he had written the address on, and at that moment the car in front of him slowed down abruptly. We were traveling in the far left passing lane at approximately 130 km/h, and that miniscule lapse in attention meant that we were hurtling towards the rear of the slowing vehicle. Thankfully Hubby has very quick reflexes and was able to slow down in time so that we did not collide, but I screamed into the phone and had to explain to my mother-in-law when we saw her what that was all about. I thought how awful it would have been for her if we had died on the highway on the way to a funeral while she was talking to me on the cellphone.
I managed a nap that afternoon at my in-laws� and then we adjourned to Delaney�s for supper, a very nice restaurant where they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary a few years back. �We� comprised Hubby and me, his parents, his older brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. I really like these people, especially the sister. The oldest brother has managed to totally alienate himself from the rest of them (again) by calling their mother �deceitful�, a story which deserves its own paragraph, and the youngest brother, who is on the outs with his sister, was in bed the whole weekend on pain medication and we never actually saw him all the time we were there.
Every July the family holds a triple-decker birthday party as the father, the second son and the son-in-law all celebrate their jours de naissance within a week of each other. This has turned into an excuse for a family reunion, often held at the sister�s place or the brother�s (she has the beach, he has a pool) and to which the whole family is invited. The oldest brother and his wife (his birthday is in November) have their noses out of joint and they will attend if it is a family reunion, but not if it is a birthday party. I don�t know if it�s because he feels shortchanged that his birthday is not being celebrated, or if they are just too cheap to buy presents. When my mother-in-law left the message on his machine last year that they were invited to the party (it is impossible to get a-hold of them on the first try), it took him two weeks to reply, and when he finally did he demanded to know what kind of party it was. His mother replied that it was a birthday party, at which point her first-born exploded that she should have said that in her phone message and she was �deceitful�. This hurt her terribly, but the next brother down has actually disowned his older sibling and announced, �I don�t have an older brother.�
Anyway, back to dinner. I ordered spanikopita and it was excellent, but there was enough food on my plate to feed a family of four, food which I ended up leaving. My sister-in-law was waiting for us when we arrived, she had had to work that day and was unable to attend the funeral, and was already finishing her first drink, then proceeded to have red wine (as did I, but not in the same quantities). The issue of the Latino general strike protesting Bush�s proposed criminalization of illegal immigrants came up for discussion, which led to Hubby bringing up the topic of the American national anthem having been translated into Spanish and the furor that it raised in the White House. My sister-in-law, whom I really do love as she is a sweet and good person, has certain prejudices (against Asians and First Nations people, for instance) and proceeded to say that she felt that English should be the only language and that she resented the fact that things were translated into French. I took issue with this, saying that Ontario had declared that it was officially bilingual, as had several other Canadian provinces. She asked why bother, and I explained that many of those provinces have quite large French-speaking populations. She responded by saying that in Ontario those people live in the north and don�t affect her, and I argued that those people should have the same right to access information in their official language as she did in hers. Then I went on to say that I was an anglophone in Quebec, part of the linguistic minority, and I was grateful as heck that I had access to information in my official language. That more or less shut her up, but I just don�t understand that kind of closed mindset.
We got away from my in-laws� around 9:45 this morning and arrived at my mom�s an hour later to visit, have a cup of tea, and return the half-slip I had borrowed the previous day. As we pulled up in our car, she was walking my brother partway home, he pushing his bicycle, and Hubby opened the window and called a greeting. My brother waved, then got on his bicycle and headed off, not staying to say hello. See? Every family has one.
We left Toronto about noon and arrived home at 7:30 p.m., which is pretty good time considering we stopped to eat a meal at about 2:00. Hubby insisted on doing all the driving since his knee wasn�t hurting and he was worried that as a passenger it would, which was actually fine with me because I hate driving long distances. We listened to jazz CDs and talked and only fought once, which is some kind of record, and had a pretty pleasant day. But it is so good to be home. I look forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. The beds at both my mom�s and my inlaws� leave much to be desired.
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