![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.caitlinhicks.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/funeral-flowers.jpg\" "\\"funeral-flowers\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nIf the coffin carries a student into the cemetery, the entire school attends, or nearly, shocked out of their heads by the closeness of it. Death is so novel to youth, and its spectacle at a funeral has a curious, alluring force. Anyway, everyone else is going, and even if you never knew the guy, you can dig out little memories abou thim just ot make the impact greater for you without really having to feel it. Then what do you do? Stand around in baffled silence like you just got the wind knocked out of you or something. You stub your toe or bite your tongue and feel the pain just to remember you\u2019re not in that box.<\/p>\n
INCOMPREHENSIBLE, death. I mean, it\u2019s so terribly final.<\/p>\n
Anyway, you can tell a lot about a man on the day of his funeral. Renowned fellows, especially if they\u2019ve been assassinated, have scores of mourners. People all over the nation tend to glorify these men until they become dead heroes, and generally, for about half of these, their memories die along with the bouquets.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never been to a rich person\u2019s funeral, but I have seen accounts of it in movies, and all I can gather is that some people are glad he died and some are genuinely broken up about it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been so several regular funerals. Usually old people don\u2019t have that many friends left living, and their funerals are pretty simple. All the rest fall into about the same category.<\/p>\n
When I was in fourth grade, my grandpa came, from his home in Wisconsin, to visit the family.<\/p>\n
While he was here, he built two benches and a picnic table big enough for all twelve of us. He fixed everything that needed fixing from light fixtures to broken down mop boards. And though our house was perpetually messy (due to the fact that Mother was constantly pregnant, and we were constantly kids), the only thing that annoyed Grandpa was the nose paper scattered indiscriminately around the house.<\/p>\n To be perfectly honest, I\u2019m not sure just exactly how Joseph A. Prudell endeared himself to this family of his grandchildren.<\/p>\n For one thing, though, he and mother had something going, that was certainly new to us. He called her \u2018Marcie\u2019; she called him \u2018Poppa\u2019 and listened to everything he said with an expectant excitement, although I\u2019m sure she\u2019d heard everything at least once before. And did he ever rave about her! It was Marcie this, that and the other. Even when he said he spanked her, his eyes lit up in admiration. Well, we knew our mother was fine, but we certainly never had heard it put the way Grandpa put it. At first it took an adjustment to imagine our mother as anybody\u2019s daughter; she was plainly our mother, and that was that. Anyway, as corny as it sounds, they were wild about each other, and pretty soon we got to be wild about him.<\/p>\n WELL, as stories go, grandpas go, and he was shortly off to the airport.<\/p>\n \u201cWrite your Grandpa a letter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOkay, Grandpa.\u201d He gave me a smack on the cheek; I accidentally bumped his hat off.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat time will you get home, Grandpa?\u201d Everyone talked at once.<\/p>\n \u201cHelp your mother clean up this house.\u201d He caught someone\u2019s attention and offhandedly preached about the nose paper, for about a minute. The boys helped with his bags; Mother stoff at a distance somewhere, her eyes just a little bit wet, sort of happily, sort of sadly observing thewhole, confused, haphazard departure.<\/p>\n We all promised to be prolific letter writers. We waved him goodbye, yelled at every plane that flew overhead that day, and then went back to our daily lives and began to carelessly forget him.<\/p>\n Well, just about. Mother found me in the bathroom, crying, simply because I couldn\u2019t handle the thought that I\u2019d never see Grandpa again. I mean, to a ten-year-old, seventy-five is a heck of a lot of living to be doe with already. I was sure he\u2019d die in bed of old age before I had the chance to see him again. Anyway, the only other time I can remember feeling so bad was when my cat got run over by a motorcycle after my ballet class.<\/p>\n For the past ten years, Grandpa\u2019s been between seventy five and eighty five and still lightly shuffling around in the same spankin\u2019 house in Wauwatosa. He had a garden of flowers, garden chairs, green grass, a crummy view of the neighbor\u2019s backyard, and a weather vane which he made himself. Between naps on good days, Grandpa lived out in the garden. Esther didn\u2019t work everyday and sometimes whens he did, he was alone. But he fit okay alone, because wherever ther was life he was okay. The Gaulke grandchildren came in ones or twos to visit him after school, or in the afternoons in summer, just for the heck of Grandpa. If gophers were rempant, someone pulled out the B.B. gun and the grandhchildren tried their hand at it, for sport mostly. I think. When I was there, they really got one. I was a bit put off by it, but I couldn\u2019t say anything, because they\u2019re hunters. There\u2019s something about hunters you can\u2019t touch, even if you do like gophers.<\/p>\n WHEN I went to visit, Grandpa never stopped off at a drive-through, and swore he wouldn\u2019t, no matter how far he was from home, no matter how hungry he was, and to my discomfort and disbelief, no matter how hungry I was. But he did pull over for\u00a0 homemade jellies and jams at a makeshift stand on the side of the road, the same day. That\u2019s the way he was.<\/p>\n He believed in big breakfasts, though, or at least good ones, and he got up early enough to eat them, and still have three-fourths of the morning left. One morning at 9:45, Grandpa had already eaten, was dressed, and was messing around in the garden. In fact, it was he who roused me from a case of the heavy lashes and lids by singing some tune in the window about a sleepy-head who rose so late she was unable to eat her breakfast and go to Racine with her grandparents. He made it up just then, and delivered it in the style of Jimmy Durante.<\/p>\n Grandma and Grandpa were quite the couple, too. She drove him everywhere, except to church on Sundays, because they went to different churches. His driving was restricted, because at his age, if he were in even on slight accident, his license would be revoked, and Esther said, \u201cHe\u2019d feel like he was on the shelf.\u201d (I rode with him to church and it ought to be revoked, he drives so fast.)<\/p>\n Well when Grandma drove and there were others in the car, Grandpa liked to show off. He sat in the shotgun seat and \u201cconcentrated\u201d on the driver. I mean he stared at Esther; she faced front, tried desperately to keep her mind and eyes on the road, and he came close to her face, just staring, with a perfectly straight expression. She was never quite sure what he would do, which was nothing, so she got nervous.<\/p>\n \u201cJoe, stop that.\u201d Nothing doing.<\/p>\n \u201cJoe, I\u2019m trying to drive, stop that.\u201d I was absolutely beside myself with laughter in the back seat; he still sat, stone silent, mesmerized.<\/p>\n \u201cGrandpa, what are you doing?\u201d No answer. I couldn\u2019t stand it either. And poor Esther.<\/p>\n \u201cJoe!\u201d<\/p>\n Grandpa kept it going, only you get the idea it was kinda old. Finally, he sat back in his former position, without a word.<\/p>\n Grandpa and Esther were married when Grandpa was in his sixties, at the disapproval of nearly everyone of his children and relatives.\u00a0Apparently, Grandma Marie wasn\u2019t dead but a couple of years, and he started getting lonely. The accounts of their courtship intrigued me, because they were so, well, old, to be getting married. Grandpa came after Esther in such a fashion that you\u2019d think he was twenty-five or something. On their wedding night, he got a ticket for speeding in a strange town.<\/p>\n THE DAY we went to Racine, we stopped off at the cemetery where Grandpa Marie was buried, for a visit.\u00a0Right next to her was a plot for Grandpa. I wondered for a second what was to become of Esther, but Grandpa filled mein on their future all the way up to their judgement day.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m gonna heave a huge rock on Esther\u2019s grave, right there, over the fence.\u201d He pointed to the graveyard across the street.<\/p>\n \u201cYes sir. If she doesn\u2019t get up, I\u2019m waking her up.\u201d And they laughed about it just as naturally as if they were looking forward to it or something. Here’s a photo of him with Marie and their first baby, \u00a0Harold.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the way he was. You felt peaceful with him, but he didn\u2019t give you a moment\u2019s peace. Well, here\u2019s an example: Esther and I were fervently watching Truman Capote on one of those talk shows, and Grandpa was feeling frisky. So between comments on everything that was said, he got up in front of the screen and danced, for crying out loud! Which was exactly what we did because we had just missed what was said on the television.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n