Yummy Sandwiches

Memorial get-togethers are never any fun, but, like funerals, they're supposed to at least be cathartic. This is the way it works: you cry and feel awful, and then eat and feel better. Right?

Maybe it was that Aunt Margie's four kids, Plotnik's cousins, had been through plenty already as they watched their Mom go from perfectly healthy to deteriorating quickly, and then the hopeless emergency surgery, and then the end. Maybe they just didn't want to talk about it any more.

So Margie's Memorial Service was a strange one -- to be sure, it was catered, with uniformed servers bringing tray after tray of yummy sandwiches and grilled vegetables to the dining table, and there was a valet service to park cars on the quiet suburban street, and there must have been close to 100 people milling in and out of the house, from people in their eighties to tiny great-grandchildren.

But nobody said a word about Aunt Margie. Nobody told a story, no one offered a toast, her name was barely mentioned at all, except for people to quietly comment in a hushed voice as to how surprised they all were. Plotnik brought some old photos and showed them to a few people and he waited for a chance to tell the story his Mom had told him that morning, about meeting Margie some 70 years ago on the south side of Chicago, but the opportunity never came up. Before he knew it, people were saying good-bye and exiting the house, and that was pretty much that.

Mummy P. was not feeling well enough to attend, and Plot was glad. There were too many people there -- she is not handling crowds these days, and Margie's health and ultimate death had been depressing Mummy P. for weeks. So Ducknik stayed home with her while Plotnik ground his way at 25 mph down a series of half a dozen freeways, thinking he was lost twice -- can it really be this far to the 101, the 5, the 605, the 405?

Plotnik is always conflicted about funerals. He despises the phony religion and feigned official sympathies that get ladled on top of the mourners' heads like clods of earth being slapped onto the casket, but cut through all that and what we are doing is saying hello and good-bye: good-bye to the person who died, and hello again to the people who are gathered together, most of whom you probably saw at the last one of these and won't see again until the next one.

But there was none of that at Aunt Margie's good-bye. It might have been a child's graduation from high school or a baby shower. Plot hates to admit this, but he probably could have used a dog-faced rabbi who had been hired for two hours to pretend he had known the deceased, or someone in tears threatening to throw themselves into the...well, in this case they would have had to throw themselves onto the buffet table next to the turkey and provolone wraps and the hummus.

The thing is, Plot is sure Margie wanted it this way. And Plot really does love his cousins, they're such good people. He's sorry his Auntie had to leave the way she did, and what can you do anyway? You can't bring her back. Maybe the point was exactly that: let's have a good time and move forward.

When Plotnik left his mom's house at noon she looked awful, and Plot told his brother at the memorial that they would probably have to cancel the party the next day. But by the time he got back at 4:30, Duck had worked her magic. The two women were sitting on the sofa laughing and telling stories. Duck says she didn't do anything, but the party was back on.

Here's what Plotnik was thinking about his Mom's party, on Saturday night, after being at Margie's memorial: when you're young most of your family gatherings are happy ones. The older you get, the more often sadder occasions get mixed in. At Mummy P's age, you almost never get to bring the family together for a happy reason. So how special this would be. Lots of food. Lots of laughter. And it was.

So many people wrote Plotnik's mother to wish her happy birthday. That's so nice. It's hard for younger people to imagine how alone older people can get, when their friends are gone, with the days when they were needed fading further and further into a memory it becomes more difficult to access. It made her feel good to get those calls and cards and it made Plotnik feel good all over again when he saw the cards arranged in her family room. Nice. Thanks, everybody.

Moving forward. Quack! Guess who's birthday is tomorrow?