2AM Traffic

I went home for a couple of days to attend my grandmother's funeral on September 11th. The family met at 10 AM at the funeral home for a last viewing of her body. There are two uncles with funeral directing experience on my dad's side of the family, so it went smoothly. The funeral took place at St. Mary's church in Lindsay. Grandma was Catholic, and it was hands down the most ceremonial funeral I've attended. For my folks' sake I went up and received communion (there's a first). Many of those in attendance responded appropriately in prayer while my siblings and I stood in quiet awe.

Her middle name was Madeline. Hers was only the second deceased body I've seen in my life, the first since my other grandmother in 1992. We weren't close. She didn't get along with my mother, though there was no vitriol between them at the end. Last time I was home my dad told me about the time he drove out to Lindsay one evening years ago to tell her that she was a lousy grandmother to his kids. I remember her as a somewhat frail, intimidating woman who had a way of staring a hole into you, an intense gaze that I believe I inherited from her. She had a voice like creaking doors and avalanching rocks rather than a wind through meadows and opening flowers. When I remember grandma I remember her voice and eyes.

I'm not sure I loved her. How can you love someone you barely knew? Whose memory evokes receiving socks for Christmas as a child? I remember being ten and playing a game with my sisters. We would hide in their room and peek around the door frame at grandma as she sat in the living room talking to our parents. Occasionally she would look over and penetrate us with those eyes and we would collapse in laughter and retreat. I have no earthly clue what she thought of us on lonely nights when she must have taken stock of her family. To us she was largely absentee.

This is how things are sometimes. It wasn't our fault. I don't know how things can turn sour, how relationships with the people you're supposed to know and be close to for the rest of your life break apart. My uncle Greg, her son, didn't attend the funeral. I struggled to remember the name of my dad's sister and avoided talking to her sons, my cousins, so screwed up by their dad before they divorced that we'll never be able to carry on a normal conversation. But then, I'm not normal either. I'm a product of being kept away from these people, to the point that I'd be fine if I never saw them again for the rest of my life. I've turned out solipsistic.

Since I moved out of my parents' place I've become more and more interested in where I come from, but I'm realizing that the links to my past are falling further and further away. My dad showed me a collection of pictures at the reception after the funeral. One of them was a picture of my dad as a baby, sitting on my grandmother's knee, with her mother standing beside her, and her grandfather completing the quartet. Four generations of a family.

"11166-17 Walter LABADIE, 22, glass worker, Chatham, Wallaceburg, s/o Peter LABADIE & Mary BLAIR, married Elma MACHET, 19, Montreal, Wallaceburg, d/o Edward MACHET & Palmire LEONARD, witn: Lawrence BLANCHARD & Christena ROSS, both of Marine City Mich., 17 Feb 1917 at Point Edward."

Peter Labadie and Mary Blair. My great great grandparents. Walter Labadie and Elma Machet, my great grandparents. Thelma Labadie and Adelore Emery, my grandparents. Who were they?

This was the first time I'd ever accompanied a casket to the cemetery. The ceremony was respectful and peaceful. I felt sorry for Leonard, the closest person to a grandfather I'll ever know, who has always been a terrific guy and who took the best care of Thelma he could. I watched him sit near the grave while the priest led a prayer and the sun glinted through a tear that hung on the end of his nose.

She'll be buried beside Adelore, dad's dad, who died forty years ago next year. Thelma will be nine feet deep in a concrete vault, so that Len can be buried on top of her at six feet when he passes. Before we left the cemetery we visited my uncle Leonard's grave, a brother of my dad's I never met before his death in 2000. On the way home we stopped by Rosemount to pay respect to my mom's parents. All of my parents' parents, now gone.