I'm Still Here

Circles, Siblings, Surceases, & Sondheims

It’s been six months since I’ve posted. A lot has happened. But, I’m still here.

Peggy would have approved of her interment urn with its background of cosmos, with the stars, moon, and sun embossed thereon in gold. It only took a decade to bring those ashes “home” to Libertytown, Maryland, the cemetery where our mother and father, dear aunt, paternal grandparents, and a number of other less dear relatives are buried.

Alas, Peggy’s remains are in a hole about twenty feet from the rest of the family, near a Hitselberger, because the church — as is its wont — does whatever the fuck it wants, regardless of what is right.

When my father, inebriated, drove into a telephone pole some 62 years ago — not his first or even second drunken accident, but, definitely, his final one — my mother, seven months pregnant at the time, bought multiple plots in the cemetery of the catholic church where he was buried. There should still be (at least) two left. The church “has no record”. This is the same church which, a few years ago, when we pointed out to them that our grandfather’s tombstone had been knocked off its plinth and damaged, tire tracks nearby clearly indicating its causation to be a lawn mower, a causation later verified by the operator of said lawnmower who was employed by the church, said that tombstones aged and sometimes fell apart and that must be what had happened and therefore WE were liable and responsible for repairs. Mind you — the stone hadn’t “fallen”; it was too far off the plinth to have fallen, rather, it would have had to have JUMPED. And, too, in a cemetery with thousands of headstones, many hundreds of years old, only our grandfather’s had “fallen”. So, you will excuse my doubt that the records of the plots my mother bought were lost, or, innocently misplaced. I’m sure the church decided, somewhere along the line, those plots having gone unused for decades were fair game to re-sell.

Somebody had to pay for all the sex abuse settlements.

So, that morning, gathered with family round the hole catty-corner to a Hitselberger into which my sister’s ashes were about to be placed, I started with an even larger chip on my shoulder than I usually carry when having anything to do with the catholic church in which I was raised.

The chip grew boulder-sized as the deacon (we didn’t even rate a real priest? After they stole our plot? Really?) went on about Peggy watching us from beyond and please would she help us avoid sin bullshit. I try — really I do — to respect people’s faith and beliefs, but, you’ll have to forgive me if my tolerance for listening to someone who is part of one of the richest institutions in the universe which has gone out of its way to avoid compensating those who were raped and abused by its employees and representatives — rape and abuse the institution knew about, lied about, covered up, and continues to deny and cover and lie about — an institution which denies women standing, actively works to deny rights to women and LGBTQIA people; an institution which cooperated with the nazis and now funds and stands with the gopzis in this country, wants to define sin and right and wrong and … yeah. No. Fuck that noise you thieving pieces of christo-fascist garbage.

Understand this, I’m not anti-God, or anti-religion. One of my dearest friends, a person I love beyond measure, is a Lutheran Reverend. I asked her to pray over my mother, with my family, as my mom died. I respect — also beyond measure — her belief and faith and God. She and her God are inclusive. She and her God see Light in people, assume Light in people, not an inchoate, ever encroaching darkness in need of constant threat of punishment and damnation. Her God isn’t building temples to itself, but, rather, making homes for all those who need comfort and solace. So, no, I’m not anti-God or anti-religion; I am anti hypocrisy and avarice and judgment and manipulation and misogyny and denial and dis-inclusion; i.e. the roman catholic church.

So, there is a conundrum for me in having part of Peggy there with the Hitselbergers, and, too, in some of the five of we remaining siblings and our offspring continuing to be faithful and contribute financially to the catholic behemoth.

But, upside, since we have no plots left there in that cemetery, perhaps that circle — or, that arc of it — is come to an end.

Endings. They come at you, don’t they? In the last six months I’ve been reminded again and again that everything ends. But not always neatly. Life, alas, is not a musical. There is not always some soaring finale that brings down the curtain. Sometimes things expire quietly, slowly, and you don’t realize until long after the last breath was taken that something has died. Sometimes, like a Christmas poinsettia, after the initial burst and beauty, you put it away, you forget it, you neglect it, and its leaves fall away without you noticing until one day, there it is, just stem in a decoratively foiled pot, and it’s beyond your skill level to get it to bloom again. Sometimes you don’t finish reading (or writing) the book because another one comes along and that other is left, abandoned, and, too, maybe, you realize you’ve lost one of your favorite bookmarks and where did you put it? It’s lost in that abandoned book somewhere in one of the many stacks of books that populate your space, your life.

Maybe you go back to it?

When Peggy died a decade ago, there existed a rift in the family. I would talk about it from my perspective, but — while I’m not sure anyone in my family actually ever reads anything I write — people’s feelings were hurt in multiple directions, and there are many different versions of what happened and why it happened and who was to blame; point being, the grief of Peggy dying happened in conjunction with — or, facilitated a slow approach to healing that breach. But then, that decade ago, I had been and was held at a distance by some of my siblings who had chosen to see me as wrong, and it had been the case at a time when I needed them to be with me, and they were not.

So, you see, the thing is, that rift and that time in my life, broke my heart. And taught my soul a lesson. There were many things said about me and to me. There were many people who had claimed to love or care about me who chose to listen to those things, who chose to believe I was unkind. Who — while they didn’t stand against me, also didn’t stand beside me.

And, it hurt. But, I didn’t fight it. I didn’t surrender. I just didn’t. I knew my truth. I knew who I was. And I knew that anyone worth having in my life also knew me and my truth. And who I was was NOT someone who was going to counter-claim and argue and defend myself when I didn’t need to defend myself. I was clear in who I was and the choices I’d made.

Was I faultless? No. Was I guilty of ill-intent or deceit? No. Could I have handled things better? Yes. Did I deserve to be treated the way I was and slandered? No. Did all of the lost bookmarks and forgotten poinsettias and holidays spent apart from my biological family and … all the unfinished and unremarked upon endings come at me in that cemetery as Peggy was interred? As I stood a few feet behind everyone else and started falling apart, which I had not expected, I was again “apart” until my sweet, dear, wonderful sister-in-law came and took hold of me.

And that day, and in the next few days, all the family gatherings filled with Peggy’s children, and their children, and the children of my other siblings, and their children, and their partners, and being embraced by them, and being crazy Uncle (and Great Uncle) Charlie - who, to quote one of them of whom I am particularly fond - “acts like a five year old” (it’s sometimes true) allowed me to bring down the curtain on some of the shows that had never ended. And raise the curtain on some new ones.

And yet, when one of the great nieces I’d not spent any real time with until this past week (she lives in California) was saying how much she loved me and wished she could move here (Maryland), she happened to be sitting next to a relative who was around for the dark rift swirling when Peggy died, a relative in whose version of that rift — which I still don’t actually know the details of — I was a villain, a relative with whom, for whom I thought those days were put to rest, bookmarked and packed away, that relative chose to say to the California great niece, “Oh, trust me, go back to California.” As in, no, don’t love Charlie. I said, “[Name redacted] Hey, that’s unkind.” And they replied, “Truth hurts.”

Well, no. I don’t think so. I think TRUTH is dangerously fungible, at which point it becomes NON-FICTION NOVEL. That’s not Truth. No, TRUTH in its purest form, TRUTH as my dear friend, the Lutheran Reverend would reveal it, is something made of LIGHT, something seen in LOVE. It might not be pretty, but it isn’t weaponized, as was that sentence used to disparage me.

I can take it. I get it. Good times, bum times, I’ve seen them all and my dears, I’m still here.

Some version of me, anyway. And speaking of Sondheim. And I always am. One of my California nephews took this East Coast opportunity to take himself, wife, and two musical theatre obsessed daughters (Thank-you Mary Martin for interceding from the great stage BEYOND to make some of my great nieces and nephews theatre obsessed) to see SWEENEY TODD on Broadway.

Now, I saw the original SWEENEY TODD on Broadway, with Angela Lansbury and replacement Sweeney, George Hearn. And I later saw it with replacement Mrs. Lovett, Dorothy Loudon. And I also saw it with Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris in the John Doyle directed version where the cast played instruments rather than having an orchestra. I also saw Christine Baranski and Donna Migliaccio in other productions and, I played Sweeney in summer stock. SO, please forgive my disdain for the Broadway replacement cast. I tried like hell to convince dear nephew to go to Sondheim’s MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG instead — it’s freaking brilliant and it is my very favorite Sondheim score — but, no.

So, after they’d been to SWEENEY (and, truth, Joe Locke was the irresistible draw for them), at one of the many family gatherings last week, I was chatting with nephew, wife, and his children, and I mentioned that I had played Sweeney. Nephew knew I’d done a lot of theatre, but the great nieces and nephews never saw me on stage, have never heard me sing, and their idea of me does not include what I consider to be a huge part of who I am — my life in the theatre. And they didn’t beleve it. Couldn’t see it. Sort of dismissed it. That’s okay.

My truth of who I am. Their truth of who I am. The Truth of who any of us are.

It doesn’t really end up in an urn, does it? No matter how pretty it is or next to whom it’s buried. It doesn’t change my ashes that one relative tells another not to trust my love. It doesn’t make me any less me that not everyone knows I was reasonably talented enough to do Sondheim. It doesn’t make me less than because I wasn’t on Broadway and didn’t have a best-seller and A could never say out loud in public that he loved me.

It doesn’t matter that Peggy and Steve and Sissie and Mommy and A have died. It doesn’t matter that endings are hurtling at me from many directions and that, in all likelihood, some have happened of which I am not yet aware.

What matters is there are people who know my Truth, and whose Truth I know. What matters is, no matter what else is going on, wherever the bookmark is left, whether or not the poinsettia ever blooms again, today, right now, in this moment, I’m still here.

And you read this. And I appreciate that. And I will try to be here more often.

[P.S. Please forgive my lack of editing and proofing. I am using the same laptop I had BEFORE Peggy died and it likes to kick me off-line and out of programs and to freeze and the cursor to jump all over the page with no warning, and so, getting this to PUBLISH is rather a journey of crooked paths and patchworking. So, apologies.]