The First Part of a Full Recounting of the Voyage West

Really amazing things, these airplanes. They whisk you from here to there with no strain and nary an ounce of effort. You spend a day or two in a different world and then the planes whisk you right back again. Disorienting it is. Thoreau looked askance on train travel, reckoning anything other than walking as too speedy and alienating; I am inclined to believe him. But planes are useful in a pinch, for attending a funeral for instance.

I arose at 4 am on Tuesday to catch a 7 am flight. I suppose I could have tardied longer, but I alwys worry about making it to, and through, the airport in a timely fashion. I am also always dismayed at passing through airports at such an early hour. The shops are still mostly closed and the morning papers have not yet been delivered. I feel that if the planes are flying then all the associated amenities and services should be available as well. But this is but one of life's minor disappointments.

My flights were, thankfully, uneventful. I landed in Chicago at roughly 9am (Central Time) and had enough space to change terminals, dash out for a few cigarettes, pass back through security and wait for my parents to arrive. Fargo is such a small airport (four gates), that nearly everyone was coming in or going out on flights with other family members. Meeting my parent meant I could help my mother handle my father and the attendant luggage. My father is quite frail. They had requested a wheelchair in the airport at Chicago but had decided not to bring theirs along. With his walker my father has little trouble, but he tires easily and it was helpful for me to attend him while my mother used the bathroom, got the rental car, and so forth.

After landing in Fargo and taking care of the above tasks we set out in a Camry sedan (very roomy, a surprisingly large trunk) to make the hour drive south to Wahpeton. I noticed again that all the trees I saw were indeed planted in straight lines. I had believed this to be true but considering how long it has been since I have visited I had questioned that idea. I was relieved to see it confirmed. But I still find the spectacle unsettling. I had misread the weather report, expecting it be sunny and in the 70s during my visit. When we arrived, while it was warm, there were thunder showers moving through. Beautiful weather on the prairie as you can monitor the approach and passing of the storms for hours in the long distance. They were harbingers of more unpleasant weather for the next day though.

The 55 mile trip went quickly. My mother knows Wahpeton well from her visits to my deceased uncle and my living granmother, who is ensconced in an assisted living home there (the Leach Home, such an unpleasant name!) We easily found the hotel and checked in, all by about 1:30. The normal rate was $65 a night but they knocked it down to $50 on account of the funeral. My aunt stayed at another place where she negotiated a $33 per night stay for that reason. (My plane flight was reduce from $1300 to $400 with no penalty for alterations for the same reason).

We ran into some other people there, my Mom's cousin Nancy, my great uncle and aunt Cecil and Annette (my grandfather's youngest brother and his wife), Cecil's son Sterling, a PhD who teaches Latin American studies at a godforsaken outpost in Alberta or Saskatchewon. Also my Mom's cousin Chase. Readers of this blog may have read of Chase before, he seems to live mostly to get other people smashed. More on that below.

Those relatives informed us that while the viewing would begin at four and the wake or service at 7, that the family would be allowed in at 2. We put my dad down for a nap and my mom and I went over. We got there nearly at the same time as my grandmother (Alice), her sister Lucille (Chase's mother), her brother Cleo (a bishop, although they don't call them that, in a Babtist church sect, serving as regional administrator for Ontario, New York and Pennsylvania)
and Cleo's son David (also a cousin of my Mother's, if you are still following.)

I viewed my uncle's corpse. The makeup job was poor, he looked very pale and ashen. Part of this was due to the fact that after he was stricken, he had fallen and lain for hours undiscovered, on his right side. Thus the blood had pooled and his face had discolored on that side, a thing difficult to cover. His hands lay on his bible, open to the page that was marked when they found him. Like his wife, my uncle periodically read the bible front to back. The passages were from Deuteronomy, but were of no great import.

I met my uncle's children, all five, mainly for the first time. I had met the eldest once before, but when he was only 2 or 3 or 4. He is 20 now. My aunt Sheri was there as well, my mother's sister. She was the youngest of the daughters and closest in age to my uncle (though still 6 or 8 years older) and she was taking his demise the most visibly. My mother's other sister, Joe, came in with her husband Dave. The worst part of this moment, indeed the worst part of the entire trip, was watching my grandmother sob over the corpse of her son. I don't know if any of my readers have had occasion to witness such a scene. She was inconsolable, moaning "Oh Gene, Oh Gene" over and over. It was equalled in terribleness only by the sight of Gene's daughter, aged 8, crying "Daddy, Daddy!" repeatedly, over his casket.

This is not a just world. Therefore, I do not seek justice nor strive to explain injustice when it occurs without apparent or direct cause. Nonetheless, my uncle's passing is a moment of particular injustice, a moment that is perhaps harder for they to explain who believe in a loving and active god than for me, who belive continually that these things happen often, and it is merely by statistics that they happen mostly to other people, or to strangers. It is not less sad for that.

To be continued...