October 5, 2008

Very dark before morning. Beethoven on the CD. I returned in darkness last night and saw by the jagged outline of the porch roof that Scott and John had not finished the job. They phoned while I was away to ask for $2000 for hauling the old roof to the dump. I supposed that was a legitimate expense, but new elements do keep popping up in a process which has been protracted and discouraging. John’s voice on the phone sounds hang-dog and guilty.

The new furnace, maybe petulant from being ignored all summer, does not work. Furnaces always pitch their hissies on a Friday night or a Saturday, so nothing can be done for the longest possible period of time.

Searching through the papers ruined by the deluge from the ceiling, seeing what might be salvaged, what should just be tossed away. Have not swept up the fallen plaster. My own private Coventry.

Whirlwind visit to Ohio for Michael Minor’s funeral. The Prius does, in fact, get nearly 50 MPG on the highway, perhaps even surpassing its publicity. It allows you some control over this, giving you a gauge so you can, through adjustments in your driving, keep the MPG as high as possible. It is a game that makes the time on the road go faster.

Crappy Knights Inn in Jackson TWP. Hiked across several highways to Mulligan’s Bar, which I found as if by radar. Discovered later it was all my cousins’ favorite bar.

Church of the Lakes in Canton, Ohio is a big, raw building at the edge of the build-up and the country, with an enormous activities room and a little sanctuary, which gives some idea of its (correct) priorities. I hadn’t seen most of my family since Patrick’s wedding, but they seemed to know me, or to know I was coming. I’m just coming to understand what a figure Michael cut in the lives of the people who knew him. Each mention of is kindness, his bravery, his good looks, his regular-guy sweetness, his extraordinary spirituality and beauty of written expression, caused a catch in the throat and silence as the speaker tried to master his emotions. His big lugs of best buddies halted through their testimonials hardly able to speak for weeping. One of them delivered himself of a queer diatribe against evolution, evidently based on the notion that such a man as his friend could not be a fortuitous conglomeration of random atoms, but that was the only cringe-making moment. All was tender and sweet and damaged. Rick Summers, my cousin and Minor’s uncle, delivered a testimonial at once funny and touching, maybe the best I’ve even heard at such a time. His wife told of his bashful but determined courtship. It was clear here was a man whom the world could not well do without, and yet do without him it must, and whatever the balance between grief and rage was in the room, only God knows, and only God needs to know. My cousin Diane, Michael’s mother, was monumental, tragic, terrifying. She was a four-foot-ten icon of grief, hardly able to speak above a whisper, face a mask of agony, tears starting and stopping without their maker being fully away, groans of horror escaping her lips when she thought of why all the people were gathered, a blameless Niobe weeping for her first-born, her golden son. I thought if we were three generations back in the old country she could collapse in the dust, keening and wailing, and that would work some of that out of her heart. Diane alone inherited her father’s dark beauty, and avoided the ample Summers farmer nose. She was beautiful and frightening. She thanked me for coming. What could possibly be said, about that, about anything? She was a ticking bomb, waiting to find God so she could blow up in his face.
Lymphoma will not be reasoned with, will not be persuaded. It cannot be swayed by a mother’s grief, or a wife’s, or a friend’s. It cannot be convinced to choose someone less loved, less in love with life, or to retire itself for the world’s good.

I think we would be all right if we could find some way to break God’s heart.

I sat in the sanctuary myself in a mixture of rage and grief, realizing, astonishingly, that part of it, a minuscule, glittering iota way back in the corner, was drama. That I really did believe that behind all, all is well, and whatever sleep we enter, we wake to glory. It cannot be said, for the saying sounds hollow, but it can be cherished and pondered upon in secret.

At rest stop on the West Virginia turnpike I ought a CD of some Irish tenor singing Irish folksongs, listened to that through the pastel mountains, with the fat curve of the moon coming up, and all the west burnt orange. Wept every time "The Parting Glass" came by. I am such a cry-baby.

Red rose and scarlet dahlia welcome me back.

Goodnight, and joy be with you all.