beginning that many poor people don’t do.
And then she left.
I stood frozen in the kitchen while she ignited the tired engine in the rust-covered piece of shit we called our “family” car and backed it out of the driveway. Alone, I aimlessly toured the entire house: downstairs and upstairs. Nothing had changed; he was just not there anymore. I peeked through the opening in my parents’ nearly closed bedroom door, but I didn’t go inside the room. Instead, I went to my own, lay on my bed, and waited for Tom to come home.
No obituary was placed in the
Reporter,
just a listing under “Death Announcements.” There was no wake or showing of the body. No funeral mass.
A Trinity school van was parked on the winding drive when my mother, Tom, and I arrived at the Ogontz City Cemetery (think permanent public housing). I had imagined that there’d be trees and tombstones. There was neither, just row after row of bronze-colored grave markers lying flat against the earth. The hearse parked behind the van. Through the tinted windows of the hearse, I saw Principal Smith; Father Fulop; six senior football players, all dressed in school-issued black sport coats; and Shelly. They stood in a solemn row near the canopy over the green-tarp-covered hole that was to be my father’s grave. I was both moved and mortified.
The football players were members of Trinity’s Joseph of Arimathea Society, a prestigious service organization that provided pallbearers and a touch of dignity for the homeless or for those who die without able-bodied friends or relatives to serve in that role. Joseph was the man in the New Testament who surrendered his own tomb for the burial of Jesus after the Crucifixion.
When the hearse stopped, the Joeys, as they’re called atschool, moved in practiced precision to the rear of the hearse, where they met the funeral director and extricated the coffin as we walked to the graveside accompanied by Father Fulop and Mr. Smith. Shelly met me there, took my hand, and stood silently by my side throughout the brief prayer service.
I felt oddly happy.
I walked Shelly to the van as Mr. Smith and Father Fulop paid final condolences to my catatonic mother. Inside, the Joeys had turned on the radio and were roughhousing, the way guys like that do.
I stopped about ten feet away from the van. “I don’t want to die,” I confessed to Shelly. It was the second time I’d shared my grim, irrational obsession with death with her.
Shelly didn’t laugh dismissively or tell me I was being silly. She simply said, “Write something.” She squeezed my hand, then squeezed herself inside the van among the Joeys, who, in their continued horseplay, remained indifferent to her company.
Afterward, not much, if anything, changed. Tom returned to his college classes, Mom kept to her cigarettes, and I kept to my anonymity with a greater resolve to make some mark of my existence, which, along with Shelly’s urging, prompted me to compose the following poem. It appeared in that semester’s edition of the
Beacon
.
WHEN I CONSIDER TIME
When I consider time and its short lease,
I wonder why I’m granted life at all.
So little time to snatch the Golden Fleece
Before answering Death’s unerring call.
Considering the mark I want to make,
Poetry seems to be my only course.
The magic, rhyme, and rhythm it creates
Lives only in the wonder world of verse.
And what of love? Don’t I deserve its charms?
To possess someone and be possessed myself.
To lie and love in sympathetic arms—
Only a day—for me would be enough.
Fully to live, to write, to love will be
Priceless pleasures not provided me.
I didn’t tell Gordon any of that; I just shook my head and said, “No.” But, of course, I’d heard about Shelly’s protest. She had even asked me to be part of it, but I’d turned her down for fear of … well … for fear of lots of things. Instead, I made sure I wasn’t in school that day. Telling the story, however, seemed like
And then she left.
I stood frozen in the kitchen while she ignited the tired engine in the rust-covered piece of shit we called our “family” car and backed it out of the driveway. Alone, I aimlessly toured the entire house: downstairs and upstairs. Nothing had changed; he was just not there anymore. I peeked through the opening in my parents’ nearly closed bedroom door, but I didn’t go inside the room. Instead, I went to my own, lay on my bed, and waited for Tom to come home.
No obituary was placed in the
Reporter,
just a listing under “Death Announcements.” There was no wake or showing of the body. No funeral mass.
A Trinity school van was parked on the winding drive when my mother, Tom, and I arrived at the Ogontz City Cemetery (think permanent public housing). I had imagined that there’d be trees and tombstones. There was neither, just row after row of bronze-colored grave markers lying flat against the earth. The hearse parked behind the van. Through the tinted windows of the hearse, I saw Principal Smith; Father Fulop; six senior football players, all dressed in school-issued black sport coats; and Shelly. They stood in a solemn row near the canopy over the green-tarp-covered hole that was to be my father’s grave. I was both moved and mortified.
The football players were members of Trinity’s Joseph of Arimathea Society, a prestigious service organization that provided pallbearers and a touch of dignity for the homeless or for those who die without able-bodied friends or relatives to serve in that role. Joseph was the man in the New Testament who surrendered his own tomb for the burial of Jesus after the Crucifixion.
When the hearse stopped, the Joeys, as they’re called atschool, moved in practiced precision to the rear of the hearse, where they met the funeral director and extricated the coffin as we walked to the graveside accompanied by Father Fulop and Mr. Smith. Shelly met me there, took my hand, and stood silently by my side throughout the brief prayer service.
I felt oddly happy.
I walked Shelly to the van as Mr. Smith and Father Fulop paid final condolences to my catatonic mother. Inside, the Joeys had turned on the radio and were roughhousing, the way guys like that do.
I stopped about ten feet away from the van. “I don’t want to die,” I confessed to Shelly. It was the second time I’d shared my grim, irrational obsession with death with her.
Shelly didn’t laugh dismissively or tell me I was being silly. She simply said, “Write something.” She squeezed my hand, then squeezed herself inside the van among the Joeys, who, in their continued horseplay, remained indifferent to her company.
Afterward, not much, if anything, changed. Tom returned to his college classes, Mom kept to her cigarettes, and I kept to my anonymity with a greater resolve to make some mark of my existence, which, along with Shelly’s urging, prompted me to compose the following poem. It appeared in that semester’s edition of the
Beacon
.
WHEN I CONSIDER TIME
When I consider time and its short lease,
I wonder why I’m granted life at all.
So little time to snatch the Golden Fleece
Before answering Death’s unerring call.
Considering the mark I want to make,
Poetry seems to be my only course.
The magic, rhyme, and rhythm it creates
Lives only in the wonder world of verse.
And what of love? Don’t I deserve its charms?
To possess someone and be possessed myself.
To lie and love in sympathetic arms—
Only a day—for me would be enough.
Fully to live, to write, to love will be
Priceless pleasures not provided me.
I didn’t tell Gordon any of that; I just shook my head and said, “No.” But, of course, I’d heard about Shelly’s protest. She had even asked me to be part of it, but I’d turned her down for fear of … well … for fear of lots of things. Instead, I made sure I wasn’t in school that day. Telling the story, however, seemed like
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