Katie Weaver and Roberta Branca

Present and Passed
By Katie Weaver
Mixed Media, 11″ x 14″
Painted using Roberta Branca’s story (below) as inspiration

The Urn or the Arm?
By Roberta Branca

I never expected so much to be going on at a funeral. Somehow, it didn’t seem right that most of the activity was expected to come from the people closest to Rodney. What I wanted to do was sit apart. Think. Achieve detachment. Instead, I found myself in an informal receiving line, next to my parents. Rodney’s wife Loretta was at the head of the line. My brother Jim and his wife Rita were next to me on my other side.

People pressed my hand, offered sympathy, but I felt like I was the one supporting them. They looked into my eyes in a searching way and I wasn’t sure what was expected of me.
An elderly lady, frail-looking and using a cane, was heading slowly towards my mother just as somebody nudged me from the side. It was the funeral director, trying to pass the urn into my hands. He explained that since I would be delivering the eulogy I might like to place the ashes on the altar —?

“I’m so sorry about your brother,” a dry hand with a firm grip was grasping mine. It was the elderly lady who’d just been talking to my mother. I was sure she was distantly related to me but I couldn’t place her. “I’m your Aunt Liddy.” This information could mean anything. In a large family everybody from a second cousin on down ends up being called Aunt or Uncle Something.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Yes,” Liddy said with the first smile I had seen all day that didn’t have a touch of gray to it. Her smile and her grip never lost their strength. I remembered, though, that I was supposed to be taking possession of the urn.

I released Liddy’s hands, and too late realized that her cane was leaning against a chair and I was her only support. She teetered toward me, but I was already reaching for the urn and I grasped it firmly, not wanting the ashes to spill and be lost forever. My companion fell and my father and brother rushed to help her up.

The line of mourners dissolved into a knot gathered around Aunt Liddy. She was lifted onto a chair, soft murmurs of concern emanating from the crowd.

I looked down at the urn in my hands, and over at Aunt Liddy. Which was the right choice, the urn or the arm? It seemed like such a clear decision at the time. My father was helping Aunt Liddy test her ankles, her knees. I took the urn, carrying it awkwardly, like a pumpkin, and placed it on the altar. Took my place behind a podium – no microphone – and offered memories of my brother.

“Rodney was my older brother, but when I think about our childhood together, I can’t remember many times when he held his age over me. We hung around together. Played Kick-the-Can with other kids in the neighborhood.”

* * *

I was not even at the funeral. I was sitting by the pond behind my parent’s house with Rodney the night he graduated high school. Jim had just completed his first year of college, and I had just finished the sixth grade. Rodney and Jim were drinking beers, smoking and flicking the still-burning butts into the pond. I was allowed a few sips of beer now and then, but no cigarettes.

* * *

“Rodney was the kind of person everyone liked to see coming into a room. But sometimes it was hard to match his spunk, his spontaneity.” I hoped nobody could tell I was fumbling to get my meaning across. They probably could.

* * *

The future was wide open, the way my older brothers saw it, so they speculated. First, next week: Parties. A camping trip. Summer jobs. Next school year: self-explanatory. Next summer: Same as this summer. School. Parties. Summer jobs. On and on, until …

“Until you graduate. Then you’ll get real jobs. Then you’ll get married. Then you’ll have children …” I ticked these off with all the confidence of a 13-year-old with faith in the Natural Order of Things.

Jim, who is kind of a spoilsport, turned to stare intently into my face. “Then we’ll die, Bob. Count on it. Death and taxes.” Our parents said something like this all the time. It sounded impressive.

* * *

“Rodney liked everybody, and he just assumed everybody liked him in return. Mostly people did. Like him, I mean.” I could feel sweat dripping down my armpits.

* * *

“… And when that happens, I don’t want you feeling sad,” Rodney said. “No funeral.” It was a hell of a moment for a 13-year-old who wasn’t even drunk. But the logic seemed sound. Life has to go on, and all that. So we all made that same promise to one another. No funerals. Who knew the Natural Order of Things could play itself out by age thirty-two?

* * *

“Even as an adult, nobody could describe Rodney as somber. It is hard, right now, for me to imagine that spontaneity being stamped out somehow. I think I will always believe it is contained here, in this urn, mixed up in his ashes.”

I hoped it wasn’t a vulgar reference.
 Rodney’s death was sudden, a drunk driving accident. Brothers don’t get to decide about the funeral. Parents do. Spouses do. And apparently Rodney never repeated his wish to anybody else. And, it turns out, final wishes have nothing to do with grief. Personal beliefs don’t have much to do with it either.

Because, even though I am not a very religious person, I am comforted by this funeral. Comforted knowing that my brother is enclosed safely in his urn, probably to be carefully kept by Loretta.

Comforted that my parents and my sister-in-law have entrusted me to safely transport my brother to the church, and that we are all feeling the same loss. Happy that I won’t have to feel this lousy alone.
——————————————————-

Spirits Rising
By Katie Weaver
Mixed Media, 16″ x 20″
Inspiration Piece provided to Roberta Branca

Autumn as Renewal
By Roberta Branca
Response to Katie Weaver’s painting (above)

Fall 1985. At 17, autumn is a time of renewal. A new school year. New clothes. New adventures. Autumn is a fresh slate. A chance to try new things.

It is my senior year of high school. My two best friends and I enroll in the senior Humanities course. It’s team-taught to cover Literature, Art, and Music. Between us we possess a wealth of creative talents. We are excited to begin serious study of our passions.

For our first music essay, Kay and I listen to our assigned compositions – Dvorák for her, Wagner for me – ensconced in her bedroom. I sit with my feet curled under me on the couch by the window, and Kay sits the same way on her bed. Kay – who has never learned an instrument, never joined the school chorus — explains what she hears in Dvorák, from mechanics to imagery. I wish mightily for tell tale clouds of steam or something to appear from wherever she is pulling all of this out of. It is as if she is experiencing a different reality.

I listen to Wagner. Kay prompts me to talk. I identify a lot of brass instruments. The rhythm is sharp and aggressive. Fear and disappointment tug at my insides. Three years of piano, one year of guitar, and one year of chorus. Still I am not hearing what Kay heard. In my essay I identify each instrument and describe the story I think I hear unfolding in each movement.

Two weeks later, I can’t tear my eyes away from the grade on my paper– a D – and this note: “Your analysis is arrogant.”

The tugging sense of dread that started in Kay’s room bonds itself to frustration with this dismissive judgment.  The mixture solidifies in my gut as hardened resolve. I appeal to the literature teacher, Mr. F.

Mr. F looks directly at me when he returns my paper without comment. My new grade is a C-. That note is still there.

Winter 1985. The art teacher, Mr. P, shows us slides of seminal works of art and we take notes.

I am won over by Impressionists. I am careful not to read stories into Van Gogh’s bold strokes or Monet’s soft pastels. I don’t want to be accused of “arrogance”.

Elle is drawn by her nature to the Renaissance. For years she has written stories and made sketches heavily laced with its influences.

I am pleased to receive a respectable B on my first art essay. In a phone conversation Elle blurts out that Mr. P criticized her for using the word doge to describe provincial princes. He wrote that there was no such word as doge, and even if there was, she was using it wrong. He gave her an F.

When I hear the bitterness and frustration in Elle’s voice, that tugging sense of dread I felt while listening to Wagner returns. Internally I question my own grade. What if I was being graded on following instructions instead of exploring my own turn of mind? What is it with these teachers and their notes?

Spring 1986. The annual field trip is coming up. All three sections of Humanities will take the train into Boston to attend the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For Kay and Elle it is their first classical music performance.

Our math teacher refuses to certify Kay’s and Elle’s class standing, which means they can’t go. As seniors, we all need to pass Geometry to graduate. I am cleared to attend. We are all earning B averages. So we mount a campaign. On the day of the trip Kay and Elle receive letters that clear their standing. Ms. G reads them without expression. She informs us, dryly, that the tickets were sold immediately when their class standing wasn’t fully certified. I forfeit my ticket. Neither Kay nor Elle can bear to take it away from the other one. None of us went.

I spent that day in a silent fit of pent up rage. Mentally I review the entire year as a series of squashed creativity, of being denied the right of any of us to spread our wings. It matters little that I gave up my ticket by choice, that this is something that really only happened to Kay and Elle. By proximity of association, it has happened to me too.

Summer. As an adult, the calendar year begins during the harshest days of winter followed by the hopeful renewal of spring. Most religions teach that this springtime renewal is the beginning of something larger than just a calendar.

At the age of 40, I am in late summer, entering the autumn of my life. Whether or not this is strictly true all the time, there is a sense of “letting go of childish things” – allowing cherished illusions and past hurts to mature. To die their natural deaths.

The process isn’t always smooth. Sometimes the same emotional gunk repeats itself and adult perspective leaves for vacation. Maturity is not doing its job. I think this happens because when we get to adulthood, we experience a volatile shift in our relationship to nature’s cycles.

Twenty-three years later I have landed back in academia as a librarian. Autumn is once again a heady time of renewal. I see two images of my friends and myself: the one I think Mr. P and Ms. G had in their minds, and the one we had in our minds. Teachers are confronted each autumn with empty vessels to fill up, season after season, hoping to see their own reflection along with that spark of recognition when learning clicks. Students see themselves as Icharus, flying higher and higher to a bright sun. We might crash and burn. Yet we complete the flight, to feel the sun’s heat.