The Microphone

  We drive to Reading along route 222, just like we did countless times when I was a child to visit our grandparents. A lot has changed along the highway, of course -there are now a number of traffic circles meant to ease congestion, but so far have done nothing but cause a lot of accidents- but the basic landscape looks the same. Old farmhouses and barns stand surrounded by fields of corn, all very pretty and timeless, with rolling wooded hills in the distance. I can feel this scenery in my marrow, and I try not to get upset by the inevitable housing developments and warehouses devouring it.

Despite the signs pleading not to, my stepfather tailgates everyone who isn't going fast enough for him, which is everyone. I try not to look at the tremor in his right hand, which has not gotten any worse since the last time I visited, but has also not gotten any better.

We pass the old water park and the hill where people used to hang glide. We pass where Sittler's mini golf course used to be, with all the safari animals; I always wanted to stop there but we never did. We pass where our car broke down once and we had to wait by the side of the road for help. We pass my friend’s house, where a car drove right through her living room wall. We pass the turnoff to the discount grocery store where Jasmine and I went once, returning with a trunk weighed down with dented cans and mysterious foreign brands. 

When we get to Reading, we head to a part of town I've never been before. The care facility is at the end of a cul-de-sac lined with dilapidated row houses. There's no parking lot so we park between a dumpster and a motorboat that looks like is has not been on the water since the eighties. We're the first ones there, and we watch as cars squeeze into spots along the street. A number of people who look much too old to be my relatives get out. There are my mother's remaining three sisters and their partners, along with two of my cousins and one of their wives, and that's it. Aside from some other cousins and their kids, this is all that is left of the family. 

After the usual greetings and hugs we all file into the care facility. The staff lines up in the main room to introduce themselves and offer their condolences. I never once came here to visit my aunt. I tried to remember the last time I'd seen her. It was at the last family Thanksgiving I had attended, which I promised myself would be my last. That was nearly a decade ago. I’ve kept my promise.

We are led to the back of the building, where there is a small chapel. I'm startled to see my dead aunt there in the wide-open casket, looking very serene. Nestled in her arms is a stuffed toy of the girl reindeer from Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer. I hear my mother say our grandmother insisted the coffin be oak.

I sit down in the back of the room and lean my crutches against one of the walls, which are lined with stained-glass windows with images of various saints. My brother comes in, which surprises me; he had to work and I thought he wasn't coming until later. My mother and my aunts all take turns to say goodbye to their sister. They greet the priest as he comes in and strides up to the coffin. 

"Stacie! So good to see you!" Father Pham tousles my aunt's carefully-combed hair, grips her hair, and continues to talk to her as if she was alive. He turns to face the sisters. "You know what I will miss the most about Stacie is when she would see me and yell, FADAAAA!" Everyone laughs. He beams. "FADAAAAA!" 

Father Pham goes up to the alter and invites the family to help tuck Stacie in, which her sisters do. “I just want her to keep warm,” one of my aunts says. A younger, harsher version of myself would crack a joke about there not being any doubt of her being warm where she’s headed. But the current, aged version of myself sees the value in keeping his mouth shut around his family. 

Eventually they close the lid and wheel the casket into the middle of the aisle. Everyone takes their seats and the staff wheel in the other patients from the facility; there were only five, including my aunt, and they are all wheelchair-bound. A woman who looks remarkably like Stacie is parked next to me. She grips a giant purple ring in her mouth, I assume to keep her from grinding her teeth. I smile and say hello but she just stares into space.

The priest starts the Mass, and an enthusiastic man named Keith calls out in a gravelly word after every few sentences.

"My English here is as bad as Keith’s," the good Fadda says, “But they know I am here. Most of them are very happy. They know only that Father is here, not what he is saying." 

"Amen!" shouts Keith. 

These days I only go to Mass when there’s a funeral attached, but I attended church every week when I was a child.  My parents spared me from Catholic school, but made me go to catechism classes for years. I served as an altar boy all through middle school. But while I may still know all the prayers by heart, I have never seen a service quite like this one.

Keith barks out the first gospel reading, assisted by one of the attendants. They lean the bible on the casket as they read. My mother tells me later that Keith has known Stacie since they were children and had been in and out of many of the same programs over the decades. 

The attendant does the second reading. “Even though I walk in the shadow of the Valley of Death…”

“You got it Mama!” yells Keith.

During his homily, Father Pham goes on at length about suffering, though due to his rough English it’s difficult to grasp much of what he’s saying. “Where soul? I don’t know. Heaven. Suffering, suffering. She used to sit right there. She used to say, ring the bell, ring the bell!” He pauses, looks down, then looks around. “There’s nothing good in the present. Eating, sleeping, suffering. Look at them. Look at them.” 

When he finishes the homily, he begins the ritualistic consecration of the host. As the priest raises the thin moon of the wafer, Keith screams “Ring!” The attendant rings the bell. 

After the mass they wheel the coffin out through a side door, then everyone else files out to the main room for lunch. I wait until everyone else has gone, then take a seat on the end so I can get up easily. One of the staff helps me carry a plate of food from the kitchen. There is spaghetti and pizza but I just take some meatballs and salad. My brother sits next to me and my mother sits across from him. Across from me is a very pretty young woman. My mother talks to her as if she knows her and the woman starts to cry. My mother squeezes her hand. This woman loved my aunt more than I did. All of these people had more meaningful relationships with her than I ever did. 

Most of the people who stand up to eulogize her are caregivers, with the exception of my uncle, who gets up twice. He repeats the line I keep hearing my family say, which is that they didn’t expect Stacie to live past nine. The truth is that people like her with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome tend to have a normal lifespan, provided they get good care. My aunt was born just a few years after the disease was first named. 

I try to think of some anecdote I could share, but my memories of my aunt, while vivid and intense, would not make for interesting stories. Should I talk about how our grandfather would bring her along as he led us in long walks around the neighborhood, or hikes through the local suburban woodlands? About how the two of them would take naps on the bed together after the family’s epic junk food banquets? Because that is how I picture her. Should I get up and describe in detail her room, where my brother and I spent many hours when we were kids, with its John Davidson and David Cassidy posters, the stuffed Muppets, the innumerable Barbies? Should I describe her belting out Frank Sinatra songs into her Donny and Marie microphone? I can picture that microphone perfectly, can feel its weight in my hand. Is this all a life is? An accumulation of meaningless, idiotic details?

A slight man in a black suit gets up and introduces himself as Bibi. He sings a gospel song, then launches into a long, meandering eulogy, much of which is incomprehensible. I find myself distracted by two very attractive women in miniskirts who are hanging out in the kitchen, eating cheesecake with plastic forks from Styrofoam plates. Just when it seems he will never stop, Bibi sings another gospel song, then suddenly sits back down. I assume he's a patient but it turns out he works there. 

The crying young woman offers to show us Stacie's room, which has not been cleaned out yet. The walls are covered by a mural of a magical fairyland, complete with a castle and a princess who has my aunt's face. The bed is completely covered in Beanie Babies. 

My brother offers to drive me to the cemetery, where they lower my aunt into the ground next to my grandparents. A few feet away is a fresh gravestone for a Korean War veteran who died a few weeks ago, just shy of his hundredth birthday. 

On the way home I tell my brother that I found the whole event surprisingly moving.

"The staff seems to genuinely care for her," I say. 

"Well sure, they don't have a choice, they're all Christians," he says. 

"I don't know, I think there’s more to it than that," I say.

"Nope," he says. 

The GPS takes us home by a different route because of a horrific accident that happened hours before. A car crashed head-on with a Jeep and was then struck by a tractor trailer. A teenaged girl and a toddler were killed.

"That priest was really something," I say. 

"Oh yeah he was amazing," my brother says. "But that food was awful."