The Ministry of Happiness

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them. ~ George Eliot

Living in the Season of Death and Dying

Tis the season I guess, the season of death and dying. My mother passed just about a month ago and we’re still dealing with everything, paying off bills, cleaning out the house, getting her ashes, getting the documents together to file for probate. Having all the conversations, dealing with insane family and near family members losing their shit, or completely being ignored by close relatives. Watching and helping family find their way through grief, it’s a lot for everyone.

And in the midst of that we acknowledge another death anniversary, it was 26 years ago today that my Grandpa Kane, pictured above, passed away. I was reminded today by my aunt who sent me an amazing message, he’d be proud of my tomatoes. A message that may seem insignificant, but my grandfather loved gardening, loved growing roses and tomatoes and he passed those passions on to me, taught me how to grow roses by tricking a little boy. You see, he convinced me to grow roses by telling me step one was to go fishing, and we did. Then we placed the fish into the holes we dug for the rose bushes and put them in. I now know of course, that this was a way to provide nitrogen fertilizer for the plants, and it was a genius approach. I honor and remember him each year by doing something he dearly loved to do, and that is to eat the first tomato of the year like an apple, with a little bit of salt while drinking a beer.

A few months before my grandfather’s death I was visiting and we were having a conversation. He turned to me at one point and said, “you know I’m turning 100 this year.” This was 1999 in the fall and I pointed out that he was born in 1910 and that he was turning 90. He insisted that because it was the millennium, he automatically turned 100. So I suggested it worked that way for me as well, he denied that and we proceeded to have a good natured argument between two stubborn Irishmen for about ten minutes when I finally gave up and said, “the hell with it, you’re so damn old be whatever age you want.” He seemed really excited about turning 100.

So it would be, several months later as I celebrated the new year holiday and the year 2000 by renting a house with a friend in Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. We got down there a few days after Christmas and coincidentally on the same day both of us got a phone call that our grandfathers were dying. Hers in Minnesota, mine in New York. It didn’t seem reasonable for either of us to travel as both were at death’s door but uncertain as to when they would pass. So we resolved to stay. When my father called and said I should come on December 30th, that it would be soon I laughed it off and told him no way. That tough old bastard, he’d survived the depression in New York City, his first action in WWII landing at Normandy, and then being blown up and taken prisoner by the Germans, escaping that camp and being recaptured. I knew he wanted to be 100 and there was no way he was dying before the millenium, and of course he didn’t.

My aunt (his daughter) is a nun, an order that is still full gear penguins, and she’s now Mother Superior of the convent she resides in and my grandpa lived nearby and took care of their gardens. So when he was dying there were all manner of Catholic religious folk around his bed, priests, nuns, hell even a bishop or two. He was in a coma and hooked up to a breathing tube, catheter, and IV’s. The night before he died the nurse walked into his room and he was gone. I don’t mean dead, physically gone, in the bed there were all the tubes but no grandpa, for a moment she thought, holy shit he’s been raptured. Then she heard the toilet flush and he came walking out of the bathroom. That’s right, at 90, he’d pulled out his own breathing tube, I just went through this post heart surgery and I have no idea now he did it. He pulled out his catheter and his IV’s, got up and went to the bathroom. The nurse exclaimed, “what are you doing?” He looked at her like she was an idiot and said, “I had to take a piss.” She got him back in bed, reinserted the tubes and the next morning he passed. So those were his last words. Given the tie to New Year’s Eve, I always think a lot about him this time of year and those amazing last words.

But those are not the best last words in the history of my family. No, those belong to my great uncle, hillbilly Joe Cutlip. By far the greatest character in my family. A West Virginia hillbilly who met my grandfather, Cordato not Kane, in basic training in the army. They would go on to marry two Kentucky hillbilly sisters who when they met them, were barefoot and hanging in a tree. Uncle Joe was amazing, great stories, great jokes, claimed to have been a sparring partner for Joe Louis, had the flattened nose to back it up. He and my great aunt never had children and he worked as an engineer and his one vice was buying a new Cadillac every year and driving up from Jersey to show it off to us in NY. He loved popping me into the driver seat and showing me all the new fancy gadgets and features. He had the first car I ever saw with a phone in it. Well, when my Uncle Joe was dying, he to was unresponsive and my mom’s sister was sitting with him. He suddenly regained consciousness and my aunt called in the nurse. She came in and checked him out, told him she’d call his wife. As she was walking out Uncle Joe turned to my aunt and said, “that nurse has an ass the size of a Bavarian oven.” My aunt chuckled and said, “I never heard that one before.” He smiled and said his final words, “I’ve never seen an ass that big before.”

So in the season of death and dying I’m reminded that before I go, I better have some damn good last words ready. ~ Rev Kane