Silver Circles

Posted by orange juice on Saturday July 29, @05:44AM

An anecdote by Gary Cadwallader

I wanted the gay priest for Pop's funeral.

Maybe it's wrong to call him gay. Effeminate is correct, for I don't know his sexuality and anyway, I didn't want him because of the way he acted. I wanted him because of what he said at my mother's funeral. That and the continuity it gave me to have them both buried by the same man. Circles are pure.

Cheryl Ann insisted on doing the flowers — an immense job, but she used to be a florist and wouldn't let me pay to have them done. And they were wonderful, the most beautiful arrangement I've ever seen. Let her showoff, I thought. She's damn good and she was the last person to kiss him while he lived. Now she's kissed him again with white and yellow roses reaching out from the casket spray like her arms reached out to him in his white deathbed.

It became a show, a party, a drawing together. We wanted to do it again, and why not? We were celebrating a man's life, not his departure from this world. My ex-wife, Katrina was there. My children were there. They didn't cry, but only wanted to be lifted up to see "Grandpa".

"When I first saw you and Cheryl Ann together," Katrina said, putting her arm around my shoulders. "I knew she was the woman you should have always been with." And then she sat with Cheryl Ann like they were sisters.

The gay priest was triumphant. He made death sound wonderful. "We lift up our dead into the waiting hands of angels," he said. And when he spoke you felt trumpets in the distance sounding like the entire chorus of heaven had joined in Pop's reception. The little man lying still in the casket was chosen to be among them. And then at the graveside surrounded by roses, carnations, and greenery like Florentine leather; the priest sang "Amazing Grace", accapella in a baritone voice like lotion soothing rough skin.

He made me stand and testify.

"He came along when I was unsure who I was," I said, "and he showed me how to be. Yes, he was a step-father, but I shortened it to Father, and finally just to Pop."

And I put Mom's wedding ring on his pinky finger and lined the casket with pictures. I wondered what future grave robbers might think of the old black and white photos. Would they crumble and leak silver across our faces?

I have pictures like that of my older brothers, silvery cracks blessing their long dead images like my memories of Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn; all of them colorless heroes fighting in imaginary worlds.

When I draw from family pictures, I draw with graphite and silver pen, and mount the works in white mattes and black frames. They line my house. They are my legacy.

Later, Cheryl Ann found a rotting, black, wood framed picture of my grandfather's graduation class. Gray young men standing in front of grayer brick buildings. It said, "Yale Divinity School: 1912-1913". The frame was hand carved with silver inlay. We put it in Pop's house, which we updated with gloss-white woodwork and deep green wallpaper. This too was my legacy, and she was able to pick Grandpa out without my help. "That's you, Georgie," she said. "All those pretty boys. You know how much money you had to have to be a Yale man in those days?"

"About as much as now, I reckon."

She looked at me, knowing how far we'd come, I suppose. And she gave me the answer to a question I'd asked weeks ago. "Yes... I'll marry you."

"Then my priest must do it," I said. "Because he's mine. He belongs to the family." I found myself smiling. "Promise me when I die, you'll have Father Paul speak for me."

There's something enchanting about circles. They are like the cracked silver in old photographs.