Family Portrait

It’s deathly quiet.

Well…that’s probably not the best choice of words, considering.

Aunt Marsha is crying in the corner while Uncle Marc is desperately trying to layer a very small plate with fruits and assorted meats. He’s doing remarkably well, nodding when Aunt Marsha talks between sobs, as if the plate is really of no interest to him.

Aunt Margaret is sitting in a chair, next to Aunt Rayna, as if Aunt Rayna really needs her there. Just yesterday, Rayna and Margaret’s feud was still alive and well. Or do healthy sibling conversations normally end with tossed macaroni and cheese and cracked flowerpots?

Grandma Bridgett was none too pleased about that.

People after person stop with Aunt Rayna. Friends, distant family, coworkers of the past, random people from the city…

The line seems to never end. But Aunt Rayna keeps the same demeanor with each person. Calm and relatively pleasant, considering the circumstances.

My mother called me a week ago. “Lully, your uncle passed away this morning.”

She’s been calling me Lully since I was younger. I’m not even sure what my real name is anymore. “Which uncle?” My mom let out a little laugh. A woman who barely laughs at anything.

“Uncle Brady.” A pit instantly formed in my stomach. “Oh no…” There was a momentary silence. “He had a heart attack, when he was at the deli. Very sudden.” The pit grew in my stomach. “You need me to come home…” my voice had trailed off. “Yes.” My mother was a woman of few words, even fewer in sorrow.

Four days later, here I was. Waking up in my childhood room. My posters of the Backstreet Boy and the Spice Girls have been replaced by my high school diploma and a review of the first article I had even written for Pish Posh, the online magazine I currently worked for. The first and only time I ever wrote a piece about a celebrity. My old box television was still there. A box full of random things I collected throughout my life, and I’m not sure had much meaning now. I stared at myself in my old floor-length mirror; I rarely wore black and looking at myself, in it, it made everything feel painstakingly real.

“Lully…maybe eat some food.” There my father was. Epitome of calm. I’m not sure I had should have expected otherwise. Uncle Brady was the youngest of three. Aunt Margaret was the oldest. Then my father. Then him. Heart attack. Nobody would have even thought.

“Eat, Lully.” My father patted my shoulder and drifted off into the crowd of people, flooding my Aunt Rayna’s home.

Uncle Marc was still lingering by the table, with Aunt Marsha nowhere to be found. I looked at the assortment of food crowding my aunt’s dining table and didn’t even know where to begin. “You know what I hate about funerals?” Uncle Marc barely talked so hearing his voice was slightly alarming. I grabbed a Styrofoam plate. “Besides the fact that, someone is dead…”

“Well…yeah…but I also hate funerals because everyone acts like a caricature of themselves.” I added a spoonful of rigatoni to my plate. “Like Aunt Margaret…” Uncle Marc nodded. “Well Margaret…is another story.”

Something in the house changed. A quiet chatter was now being replaced by a risen fever pitch.

Oh no.

It was like the parting of the Red Sea and through the front door, my Uncle G walked. It was my Aunt Margaret, then Uncle G., then my mother. They were all so drastically different. My mother. Spelling Bee champion. School music teacher. Married. Had given birth to a beautiful child who had turned out reasonably well. I say reasonably because at 36, my life was far from a romcom. But who needs a partner when you have your career right? Right.

Aunt Margaret spent most of her days half committing to things. She was flighty. And she is an avid bingo player. And poker. And anywhere you could plop a bet down. She also would normally wear a glittery visor but today her hair was pulled back into a bun. But I’m sure the visor was in her car.

Then there was Uncle G. Short for Gerald. Showed up to my high school graduation with a wife, he had married in Vegas two nights before. Showed up to my parents’ renewal ceremony, inebriated and wearing a powder blue tracksuit. And now here he was. His arm in a cast. Shoes untied. Hat barely covering his hair, which was severely outgrown.

There was a lot of chatter as he navigated the house. He hugged my mother and father, neither one of them would ever say anything to make waves. Uncle Chip, Aunt Margaret’s husband, shook his hand. When he reached Aunt Maragaret and Aunt Rayna, which was quick, considering the line had stopped moving and everyone was surveying the scene.

“Rayna…I was so sorry to hear.” He somehow managed to hug both my aunts at the same time, even with one arm being in a cast. I stood by the walkway, surveying the scene as well. Plate left unattended. Uncle Marc was still next to me, eating pepperoni and crackers. “I wonder why he’s here. Normally he tries to stay away from family things.” Crunch.

Uncle Marc let out a sigh. “I hate funerals.” He walked away then, just as Aunt Marsha was sobbing into the chocolate cake, one of the neighbors had brought.

My father appeared next to me. “Your Uncle G. always knew how to make an entrance.”

“I think Ms. Barnett is mystified.” One of my aunt’s neighbors, Ms. Barnett, was seemingly transfixed with her mouth slightly open. “He’s an interesting guy.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah…interesting.”

“Death causes people to be so close, but yet so far.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Lully, that when people die, it brings a whole bunch of people together, but it doesn’t change that someone has died. And tomorrow…life will continue for most of these people, but your Uncle Brady is still gone.”

“I hate funerals.” My dad looks at me with a look of sorrow, yet warmth. “So does your Uncle Marc.”

I laughed then, even as tears began to fall from my eyes.