| My grandmother was put in the dirt today.
It was such an odd feeling, the wake last night; as we stood and talked and laughed and re-acquainted ourselves as well as meeting family members I never knew I had, it kind of made you forget there was a dead woman who held this family together at the front of the room.
My cousin Freddie said it best, "If this family was a Mafia-Styled family, Gram would've been the Godfather."
Today, I almost cried. The man at the Funeral home said, "You may now come up and pay your final respects to Lucy." It was rough to know that your grandmother was going to be locked up in a tin can, kind of like a sardine, except I think more people would want Sardines than Lucy on their pizza. Anyway, I felt like smacking the guy when he closed the casket, yelling and him and calling him awful words. I felt like telling him, "Hey, Guy, who the hell do you think you are to be the man who decides at what moment Gram has had enough? Did you know her? Were you there to get the beatings? Were you there to hear her yell like no other? Were you there.....alright, make sure that suckaz TIGHT! We can't have her getting out of there."
So I was a pole-bearer. I carried her from the Funeral-Home to the Hearst, from the Hearst to the Church and from the church back to the car. It was rough to do that final job, knowing that would be the last time I'd ever be that close to Gram. She was a crazy woman. A crazy, violent, loud, brow-beating, angry lady. But we all loved her.
Funny story; you know those little prayer cards they make? They have like Mary or Jesus on the front, the name of the dead-guy on the back, their birthday-deathdates and a prayer? Well, for Lucy Jones, they put the wrong birthday on that card on the first night. My father and I noticed. He made the joke, saying, "These things are like double-stamped baseball cards, or cards with Mickey Mantle batting lefty. Keep it, it'll be worth something." I laughed the rest of the time, thinking about that, and the stories I've heard about Lucy.
One story: She beat my father from Guyon Ave to the Oakwood train-station with a parade of his friends following him, screaming, "HIT HIM! HIT HIM!"
Another: The time my dad came home drunk, when he was 16 years-old. Lucy got up, looked at him, and proceeded to beat him from the Fridge in the kitchen, to the door of my father's bedroom, up-stairs.
She was a good lady, with a mean left-hook.
R.I.P. Lucy "Gram" Jones
n.t. |
