Funerals

I could see where the soldier was going to take his next step, because the stone beneath his feet was marred from his never ceasing guard.

His shoes clicked loudly with every step. His clothes looked stiff, like the clothes a highschooler would wear in the spring musical. His rifle looked old and useless for any real fighting. 

There was a crowd gathered on the steps, watching him pace. They took pictures. They watched him, mesmerized as he passed back and forth. Some of them stayed to watch longer than others. Some of them grew bored after maybe a minute or two. Others sat on the carved marble beneath them, using the old metal railing to ease their descent, and left their eyes locked on the soldier.

I watched for longer than I thought I would.

At first, I didn’t even notice him. All I could see was the huge tomb, white and cold, the loneliest grave in the entire cemetery.

I only noticed him when he took his first step. He’d been standing there, completely still, for maybe a minute and a half before he moved. I don’t know how long he was standing there before I came to see the memorial.

My parents said that they knew that we might be having lukewarm feelings about our country right now, but by the end of this DC trip we’d be proud to be Americans.

I think that “lukewarm” is putting it mildly, but standing at the Unknown Soldier’s grave, I definitely felt something new.

I felt grief, a different kind from any I’d ever felt before. 

I’ve only been to a few funerals in my life, which I am grateful for. The few that I remember have mostly been for people I didn’t know or remember.

That is, all of them except for the funeral for my Gimi and my Aunt Judy.

I remember Gimi. She was my great-grandmother, and every summer we’d travel up to her lake house and spend the fourth of July there. 

I remember her because she was always smiling, she would let me sit in her lap in her walker, and because she made Goulosh. Goulosh is this pasta dish, and you make it with ground beef and ketchup and it sounds super gross but I loved it. I miss it.

At her lake house, we would sing around the fire pit and roast marshmallows. Gimi taught us all fun songs that didn’t make sense, like The Villain song and The Acorn Song. 

“I’m a villain, a dirty dirty villain, I put poison in my mother’s cream of wheat…”

“I’m a little acorn round, lying on the cold, cold ground. Everybody steps on me, that is why I’m cracked, you see…”

Gimi used to have a second house over in Arizona, but I don’t remember it. I only got to visit once. She was getting too old, and she couldn’t fly across the country all the time to live there anymore.

So she lived with Mimi, my mom’s mom and Gimi’s middle daughter. 

I liked getting to see her so often, but she was also coughing more and more.

Gimi was super sick at the end. 

And, near the end, we took her up to her lake house. And we brought Judy, too.

My Aunt Judy used to pick me up from school almost every day. She would even sit in with me at girl scout meetings. She would yell at the other kids for running around and playing rough because it wasn’t very lady-like. 

My troop leaders loved her. They thought she was the funniest person. 

When Judy moved into the Nursing Home, we went to sing Christmas carols for them every year. And even besides that, mom and dad would drop us off to spend the day with her every now and then.

She would give us money and take us to eat at the cafeteria, and she would tell us about how she must be bad because all she ever asks from Santa every year is a rich husband, but she never seems to get one.

During Covid, we couldn’t sing inside anymore. So instead, we put on masks that made us look like Christmas elves, and we went around to all of the rooms that had doors and we sang carols the old fashioned way. 

My dad even came, and he was our one baritone voice in a sea of screechy sopranos. 

Judy loved it.

Judy was pretty sick at the end, too. Her kidneys were giving out and the doctors tried to get her to get treated for it, but she didn’t want any. She said it would only be more work and pain for a few more months, and she just didn’t see the point.

My family took her out of the Nursing Home, and she lived in my Ga and Papa’s house. They’re my dad’s parents, and my Ga is the kind of lady that will have five dogs at a time because she came across a stray litter and couldn't say no to taking care of any one of them. 

Ga and Papa moved out of the master bedroom and into the bedroom that me and my sisters would stay whenever we spent the night. They turned up the temperature in the house up so high. I hated how hot it was, but they wouldn’t budge it because that’s how Judy wanted it. 

The doctors said that since she wasn’t getting treatment, she had six months left.

Everybody in my family heard that and decided that the last months were gonna be Judy’s best months. 

They took her out on family trips, my old girl scout troop leaders were working on maybe doing a surprise party for her, and in the summer, my family took her up to Gimi’s lake house.

Judy loved it. 

She bought fudge, she ate junk food, and she and Gimi fell asleep on old armchairs in the living room watching old western movies. 

It was so much fun

Until Gimi got sick.

They had to call an ambulance. I didn’t know what was happening fully, mom and dad wanted me to just have a good time with Judy. I just knew that all of a sudden, all of the family members that weren’t planning on coming were suddenly there. Out of nowhere, everyone changed their schedule and moved their appointments around and it was a big family trip up to Gimi’s lakehouse, just like it had always been.

When Gimi died, it took months for them to have the funeral. 

The family is so big and she wanted to be cremated anyway, so they didn’t need to rush to prevent decay. 

When Judy died, they had the funeral that Wednesday.

Gimi died in the hospital.

Judy died in her sleep, in my grandparent’s bedroom.

Their funerals were in the same week. I think back to that and find it strange how the first real deaths of my life lined up so closely.

I cried so much at Judy’s funeral. It was at the church that was connected to my elementary school. Right as we were arriving to start greeting people, the church was spewing children that had just finished attending Wednesday Mass.

Two of my classmates were servers for the mass, and my dad taught the priest back in high school. 

I sang Amazing Grace, while my sisters and dad played the accompaniment of guitars and piano. 

Afterwards, my troop leaders from girl scouts came to pay their respects. They brought Judy a vase of daisies, because that was the level of girl scouts we were in when Judy became an honorary member of our troop. 

At Gimi’s funeral, I didn't know anyone.

There were my cousins and my aunts and my uncles and my mom’s cousins and their aunts and uncles and then there were more and more and more people I’d never met. It was so much bigger than Judy’s.

I didn’t cry. I ran around with my cousins that I hardly ever get to see and we tried to start fires with matches that I got that wednesday. They were right next to the tooth picks at the restaurant that we went to after Judy was buried. They had the logo for the restaurant and their phone number on the front.

We giggled and tried to guess which of our other cousins would turn out to be gay.

We stole deserts and did each other's makeup.

But when I stood in front of the Unknown Soldier’s grave, it didn’t feel like that.

I didn’t feel the deep sorrow I felt at Judy’s funeral, and I didn’t feel this somber emptiness I felt surrounded by strangers at Gimi’s. 

I felt so resigned.

The guard, grinding lines into stone, toy gun in hand, marching on forever.

He didn’t even know who he was defending.

Across the world, my country is raining hell on civilians. My country is gunning down children. Myu country funds genocide, and it murders its own people in the streets.

And there were two soldiers, both without names and only one with a life, walking in circles for the rest of time.