A weekend after my niece came down to visit, I got a call from Andrea, Charles’s uncle’s wife (I don’t think C ever thought of her as his ‘aunt’). Charles’s cousin Tony had passed away.
A little background on the players here. Charles’s mother Anna was the second of two sisters (Grace being the older) and their mother died right after Anna was born. (I think it was not technically ‘in childbirth’, but it might as well have been.) Grace and Anna had no mother then, but at some point their dad got them a babysitter, and eventually married the babysitter. This was C’s grandmother Rose, who was the only maternal grandmother he knew, and she eventually had Sebastian (aka “Uncle Sibby”), the girls’ half-brother.
Grace had three sons – Anthony, Frank and Phillip – and Anna had two, Rich and Charles. The cousins were quite older than R and C – Charles, the youngest of the five boys, was closer in age to Tony’s daughter Linda than to him.
By the time I entered the scene, almost 30 years ago, Aunt Grace (who C adored) and their dad was already gone, but Rose was still around and lasted until almost 100. Sibby’s first wife (“Aunt Rita”) had passed away and after about a year of merry bachelorhood, Sibby had married Andrea, an extroverted go-getting businesswoman who the rest of the family found challenging. Sibby and C adored each other, but Andrea was always someone you had to work with or around.
That side of the family (the Abramos and Miraglias) live up in Connecticut. Working-class Italians from central casting, including rumors of Mafia connections… I never expected them to be gay-friendly, but they were always nothing but lovely to me. Sibby and Andrea came to our home many times for holiday meals and we travelled up to visit them at their horse farm in Newtown, or to Tony and Rosemary’s place in Danbury. When I spent three seasons conducting operetta in Stamford, this bunch came to see both Gondoliers and Mikado – and I can’t imagine they enjoyed it, but they loved Charles (“Charlie” to them) and therefore loved me by association. Ro, Tony, Sibby and Andrea all came to our wedding, possibly the first (and only) gay wedding any of them had been to. (Sibby, dear simple soul, was kind of baffled when C told us we were getting married, he wasn’t sure why that would be a thing, but he was there, having a great time and taking pictures.)
And Tony and his daughter Linda came to C’s viewing. The others didn’t only because of age and infirmity.
Anyway, Tony was 83 and his passing was not particularly a shock. His younger brothers were already gone. Still tragic, and I won’t go into details, but particularly hard on Rosemary. No question that I would attend (although, honestly, I wasn’t sure how I’d be received). I got the details from Andrea and figured I could take a day and a half off from work and do an overnight in Danbury. After working Monday morning, I headed up to the Avis lot and picked up a car. I’d decided to go for a particular cheap option of “let Avis give you any car they want” and ended up with a big-ass Ford Explorer. It actually drove just fine, but it was a big mutha, that’s for sure. Bought water and car snacks, then headed up, easy 90-minute drive, and checked into the Ethan Allen hotel (really), which is where we’d stayed for Rose’s funeral.
The viewing was from 4:00-7:00 and I headed over around five o’clock. Good thing it was a nice night (it was already dark), as there was a line down the block waiting to get into the funeral home and I had to park in an overflow lot. Tony had a lot of friends. They were routing people past the guest book and then straight by the open casket, and the family was in a line for greeting after that. (Me: gosh, we didn’t do it that way for C – did I do it wrong? Oh, well, too late now.) I greeted Rosemary, poor thing – and she gave very generic greetings and responses until she realized who I was, then went, “Oh, ERIC” and got out of her chair to give me a hug.
I’d met her daughter Linda several times, and we could actually talk to each other. With her, and many others, I had the conversation, “How long has Charlie been gone?” “Two and a half years on Wednesday… not that I’m counting…” Other than Linda, most of that crowd either hadn’t seen me since C passed away, or hadn’t met me ever. I hadn’t really come up with a good way to say, “I’m Tony’s cousin’s widower”, but to one of Phillip’s daughters, I said, “I’m Tony’s cousin-in-law” and it took about a millsecond for her to go, “oh… Charlie!” They all knew him, of course, and I got lots of condolences from everyone.
Sibby and Andrea were already there in the corner – can’t remember the last time I’d seen them – Andrea calls me periodically and berates me for not calling them or visiting – and yeah, I need to be better about that. The point was made, several times, that Uncle Sibby isn’t really in shape to come down to NYC to visit, so if I want to see him at all (and I do), I need to come visit. Message received. Almost 90, he actually looked quite good, albeit thin. He really is one of the world’s nicest people. We got caught up, then Rich and Dottie showed up, and the five of us made a little team until 7:00 happened and the funeral people kicked us out to let the family have some private time. Rich and Dottie drove back home (to the Catskills! Two hours! Insane.), but the Andrea and Sibby and I had dinner together and had a nice time. Andrea got upset with me when I grabbed the check, but I said, ‘you KNOW that C would have grabbed the check if he’d been here, I’m just doing my job’. As always, any time Sibby got into storytelling, Andrea tried to shut him down, but I’m comfortable enough now with them that i just said, “stop it, Andrea, I want to hear this’. Apparently there was a bit of effort back in the day to guide Charles to the straight and narrow, since he didn’t seem to be heading in that direction, and there were some funny stories about strip clubs and such. (Andrea: “No one wants to hear that, Sebastian!” Me: “Oh, I do…”) But Sibby was trying to make it clear to me how much they were happy about C’s life, and that I’d been a part of it.
Back to the Ethan Allen. I’d been hoping to have a cocktail at the hotel bar before settling in, but the bar was already closed (I guess Monday nights aren’t that hopping) and I didn’t feel like going out again. So back to the room, where I discovered I couldn’t get either TV (I had a little suite, got a good rate) to play MSNBC, grrr. In general, the Ethan Allen turned out to be kind of a disappointment.
I woke up at my usual time, and had not-great in-room coffee. Waffling about what to do for breakfast, I realized I had plenty of time, a car, and easy access to nature. Let’s go find a nice place for a powerwalk or a hike! After a little computer searching, I decided to go to nearby Tarrywile Park. The shortest hike, around Parks Pond, looked easy and would take the right amount of time.
Turned out it was a very nice hike, although I didn’t really have great shoes for it.
What was funny is I went around it clockwise, and the first half of the hike was actually pretty tricky – a lot of exposed roots and slanty hills and me trying not to trip or slide down the hill into the pond. Keeping an eye on time, I was prepared to turn back if I didn’t think I could get to the end and around to the other side. Then as soon as I did loop around the end, the paths got super easy and I did the other side in about ten minutes.
Did I have time to hit up a diner for breakfast? I might have been able to pull it off, but I ended up just going to McDonalds. I figured at least the coffee would be good, which it was.
Clean up, pack, head out to the church. Big Catholic church, very nice inside. I sat near the front with Rich, Dottie, Sibby and Andrea. Not much to tell, except there was an interesting moment. Tony’s son, Tony Junior, is perhaps a little bit color-outside-the-lines mentally (I’d never met him before, and I was trying to remember what C had told me about him). During the service, he was going to read a little bit of a eulogy and about 10 minutes in, he just decided it was time, and got out of his seat and went to the podium and started speaking, even though there was singing and mass events happening. I was watching this bemusedly, and there really wasn’t a way to just let him do his thing, it was really smack in the middle of something else already happening, so the priest had to gently stop him and get him back to his seat. When it was actually his time to come up, they made it super clear. So of course there was a lot of muttering – but ya know, it was fine.
Afterward, we were all invited to a restaurant for the collation, but I was peopled out by this point and I bid goodbye to my four and headed home. I still need to send a condolence card to Rosemary, I felt bad about not really getting to say goodbye. But it really was nice to see all those people again – and even though it was a lot harder there just on my own without Charles as a buffer, it once again pointed out to me that at this point, I shouldn’t be surprised that his family continues to welcome me into it. Because they loved him, hugely.
Still not up to writing about the election, we’ll get there. And I have silly stuff about what I’m watching on TV, but I’ll get to that later as well.
The Toast Point Page 