Sorting Through the Bullshit

Things with my dad's family are generally a little awkward because none of us really know each other. I spent most of this weekend with my dad's family because my grandfather's first memorial service was on the eleventh. Yes, there will be a second service in September at Arlington National Cemetery because he was career air force, though I honestly feel like I won't be able to stomach another service full of these great words about this great man, who wasn't really a great man at all.

I had prepared myself as much as I could for the service to consist mostly of bullshit and I wasn't disappointed. A friend of his and WiVi's (my grandfather's wife) led the service and it painted my grandfather, who we all knew as Pop, as this great American hero and someone for young people to aspire to be. What they didn't say, and maybe what only I and the rest of the blood relatives know, is that that would mean the youth aspiring to be a self-centered drunk who annoyed the hell out of his first wife and changed his will so that his children wouldn't get anything from his estate.

Then members from the crowd, which there was a pretty big crowd, were invited to share there stories. A couple of his army buddies shared and then his older sister who looks like a movie star from the 1930s and gave a impressive performance, albeit slurred and hard to understand, about her "baby brother."

Then at the end they played a series of songs. First was "The National Anthem," then "Taps," which apparently makes everyone but me cry, and then an old air force song from the forties.

I felt like I was wading through a pool of lies and that the stench was evident to anyone who mattered to me.

I didn't really feel anything through the whole service, except at the very end, but it wasn't for my grandfather, but for my dead grandmother. It was my maternal grandfather, my pawpaw, who came to the service along with my mom, who did me in. After the service finished I went over to them to say good-bye and he said to me, "The saddest thing about all this is that Dolly wasn't mentioned once." Dolly (or Nanie to me and my cousin) was what everyone called my dad's mom and at the funeral of the man she lived with for more than fifty years, she might as well have never existed. Hell his children and grandchildren were barely acknowledged.

Sixty years of a life just conveniently left out and a woman who was in it for only nine was the most important person there. Wivi (she's Danish) and Pop met about a year after my grandmother died. Pop went from this distraught widower to a love struck teenager on a drop of a dime. After Nanie died, he was obsessive about putting pictures together and even said once, "I've lost children, but there's nothing like losing your spouse." Of course what it really boiled down to is that he didn't have anyone to take care of him anymore and Wivi gladly filled that role. He didn't need his daughter anymore, who lived near by and had really taken on the caregiver role after Nanie died, and all the things that were reminders of his old life slowly disappeared.

I understand moving on after a spouse dies and even taking the chance to marry again, but your new life shouldn't negate your old one, even if it is more fulfilling to you.

We weren't done after the service was over. We had to then go to the condo of a woman who lives below Wivi in their community. I rode there with my cousin and her husband and on the way we joked about what excuse we could use to get out as early as possible. Luckily, they have a young dog named Ladybug and we had a much needed laugh over using the term "LB" when one of us had to get out. I know we probably sound like horrible people, but at least I'm being honest and not pretending to be all nicety-nice to people I don't know and don't even really like.

The majority of people there were people who only knew Pop after he and Wivi were together. It's amazing to me how one person can be perceived so differently by different people. His friends adore him and think he was the greatest thing ever. I can't help but wonder, who was the real Pop? Was it the neglectful, detached father we (his children, Nanie, this grandchildren) knew or the friend with the boisterous stories that everyone loved? Or were they both lies?

Of course, none of us will ever know. All we have are our own personal truths and in the end, as far as how you feel about a person, that's all that really counts. That's what makes a person who they are to you and Pop by blood was my grandfather, but I never felt related to him. Even as a kid when I was around him on a regular basis while Nanie babysat me, he was more of a fixture, who stood at the bar in the kitchen and held a drink in one had and a cherry cigar in another. He was never a real participant.

I wish I felt bad. I feel bad that I don't feel anything for him. Well, I do feel angry about his disregard for his family, but I'm not sad. I guess you can't really feel sad over a fixture.