Follow me down to the Mummer's parade

I woke up around 11, made coffee, fired up the wood burning stove, brushed my teeth then took the train down to the parade. It was a drunk train. I got to the station about five minutes before the train and the platform was packed with people drinking or already drunk wearing either Eagles jerseys or mummery. I had in my backpack a bottle of wine and a bottle of scotch. The whiskey was a present for Jack. The wine was for us to drink at the parade. I opened it on the train and took a few pulls. Happy 2006 I said to the drunks next to me. They raised their cups and said, “Rabble, rabble, rabble!” and we drank to the New Year and I recorked the bottle and stuffed it back into the bag. As soon as I got off the train I bought a hotdog and ate breakfast on a bench.

I met up with Jack and his wife at the 13^th Street subway stop after eating a second dog with mustard and kraut. I was happy to see the two and immediately opened my backpack to give him his gift. It gives me great pleasure to give gifts. He loved it. He loves whiskey. Then he gave me my gift, a small box of fine cigars. I never expected a gift from him. It was touching. Jack’s mom died Tuesday and was buried Friday. When the hell did he have time to go out and pick me up a gift? But now that I think about it, maybe his wife did the shopping. I’m starting to think she’s really thoughtful, but quiet and doesn’t let on about much. At the funeral I overheard two women I didn’t know talking about how Jack’s new wife went out and bought everyone presents so there would be Christmas at the house on Christmas morning.

I can’t imagine the sadness they all must be feeling. There is so much about her death that breaks my heart. And me, I’m just a guy who only knew her for a long time. I think about my friend Jack, and his brother, and his sister, and his sister’s kid, and especially Jack’s father who lost a wife he loved a great deal. Everyone else has someone else, but Jack’s dad is now alone. I shudder when I think of the new emptiness in his life. I also think of my family, of my mother whose death I can’t comprehend, of my father who would be crushed, just like Jack’s dad, if my mother were to suffer and die in a few short months. I also think of my wife and how I don’t ever want to lose her and be alone.

This summer, before any of us, other than Jack’s mom I can only assume now, knew the cancer had returned a third time, I saw her at Jack’s wedding and thought it amazing that someone who had been so sick and stared death so closely in the eye twice before could look so beautiful. I remember the exact moment that thought came into my mind. I was sitting at my table, sipping a gin and tonic, watching her smile and dance with Jack’s dad to Sinatra. This time I really thought she would do it again. I thought, just like the other two times, she’d come out alive. But she died in five swift months. That last time I saw her my wife was two months pregnant and morning sick for weeks on end. She told my wife about how sick she would get when she got pregnant. And now she’s dead and my wife is still pregnant and will be pregnant for another two months.

The day of the funeral was one of those late December days where the sun shines brightly but never makes it far over the horizon. By mid-afternoon the temperature peaked at 45 and long shadows were cast across the cemetery. Preceding the long procession to the cemetery the funeral mass lasted a little over an hour. It took place in the church where I was baptized, in a church where I experienced happy events, and remember sad moments, but not any as sad as this. These days I don’t care much for church, I find it tedious and uninspiring, but her mass was beautiful. The church was packed, maybe three hundred people, we sat in the second to last pew, and at the end of the mass, before the men of the family wheeled her coffin out of the church Jack’s dad spoke a few soft words. Over his words you could hear the muffled sounds of three hundred people quietly weeping.