Tboy comes to you today from his Deep South home town, where Clan Theaterboy assembled today for the funeral of Grandmother Tboy, who died Sunday morning after a long slide into the grim twilight of Alzheimer's.
Even before her illness, the matriarch was a remote and not particularly warm figure, and this side of tboy's family has never been especially close-knit. So as you might imagine, today's gathering was a scene of positively Brechtian perversity. Tboy has changed names in what follows, but he swears to you the details are all true:
There were aunts and uncles and cousins and more cousins variously removed -- including, no shit, two first cousins once removed, one five weeks old, the other 60-plus years. (Just to clarify: These two are only first cousins once removed to tboy and to his brother and sister and to those of tboy's first cousins who aren't their grandmother; to each other, they're first cousins thrice removed. Tboy isn't sure why he keeps track of these things.)
Tboy's Aunt Marian was there, along with her first and third husbands. The first husband is second cousin to tboy's boyhood best friend's mama, who also turned up. So we're still practically related, this first husband and tboy. Which is good, 'cause tboy and Cousin Thad, who's the son of first husband, look frighteningly alike. Aunt Marian's second husband did not attend, possibly because we all cheered when, several years back, she served his sorry ass with divorce papers and a notice that she'd had his assets frozen until the court could divvy 'em up. She kept the Harry Winston diamond, too. Aunt Marian is tboy's hero.
Marian's daughter, Cousin Annabel, who lived in D.C. briefly, once worked in Moscow for Russian Vogue, and is now married to a forest ranger -- sigh... -- sadly did not attend.
But Cousin Delores, who was the only one of the 9 grandkids other than tboy to actually sit the death watch, was there with her husband the West Virginia-born Santa Claus lookalike (I swear to God, he's like 6'3" and near 300 pounds, and has this insane beard).
They brought their 8 children and three grandkids. Those of you who are paying attention will note that this means Grandma Tboy was survived by no fewer than three great-great-grandchildren; this is a smallish point of pride for a Southern family, and we're only sad that the rest of us grandkids have been so damn slow about popping the little fuckers out.
Cousin Nathalie, who once tried to set her husband on fire, was there. (We let her out for special occasions, and anyway, he was beatin' her, so ...)
Tboy's polio-survivor, wheelchair-bound, painkiller-addict Aunt Beulah was there, too, coked to the gills as usual on Percocet and whatnot. And at her own mother's funeral, she actually had the balls to pass a nasty remark about her own son, Anthony. Now, you have to understand that Cousin Anthony only came to the funeral because tboy's mother called him and asked him to, and tboy was glad to see him. (Tboy, Thad, Anthony, tboy's brother Chad, who looks just like Anthony, and Cousin Delila's two oldest boys were pallbearers.)
Anyway, Anthony hasn't spoken to Aunt Beulah in something like five years, for reasons tboy understands only dimly. They have to do, apparently, with the sale of a house and the buying of another house and the question of who Aunt Beulah would be living with when she could no longer live alone. Beyond that it's like a Stephen King novel: gruesome, but who can keep track of the twists?
After making said snide remark, though, Aunt Beulah apparently felt a pang of motherly remorse, and decided that the cemetery was the place to try to make amends. She asked her daughter/tboy's lawyer-in-training cousin, Mary Alice the Unrepentant User and Manipulator, to push her chair over to Anthony. And Anthony turned on his heel and walked away.
And y'all thought you were all about drama? Tboy's coming home. Brecht, hell -- it's like an O'Neill play down here, and he can't take it anymore...
[grin]
T'Boy, there's a wonderful play in your descriptions of your extended family. Something of a cross between "Daddy's Dyin, Who's Got the Will" and "Mourning Becomes Electra", and if you'd stayed there any longer, perhaps a little "Medea" or "Oedipus". When are you going to write it?
Posted by: Thom | Tuesday, 16 March 2004 at 23:55