PMonkIsTrying#3

THAT OUR AFFECTIONS CARRY THEMSELVES BEYOND US

Montaigne reflects on the various ways people regard their after-life. Not the after life of heaven and hell; he avoids specifics of theology, a wise move in an era of bloody sectarian strife. He is intrigued by the concern people have for the disposition of their earthly remains. Edward the First ordered his son to boil the flesh away from his bones so soldiers could carry them into battle as talismans. A successful warrior king of Bohemia had his skin stretched to form a war drum to continue his string of victories. The Venetian soldier, Theodoro Trivulzio, in a fit of excessive bellicosity, decided to fight hand to hand though the enemy territory of Verona rather than request a truce to return the dead body of his general safely home. He didn’t want his (dead, and presumably unconcerned) superior to be shamed by a show of a fear the general never exhibited while living. Philosophers are more sanguine, their reaction can be summed up by “Meh, whatever. ” Montaigne is inclined to let his posterity do what they see fit.

I suppose if you have a religion, much of that is decided for you. Neanderthals had burial rituals a sign we were evolving from our primate ancestors (YES!! I do believe I have descended from apes!! Why not? Apes are cool, even without the funeral rites.) And growing up as a Roman Catholic (pre Vatican 2) Sicilian-American whose family had its New World roots in Red Hook near the docks in Brooklyn, I went to wakes as a matter of course, even as a child. Right after a person died, there would be calling hours at a funeral parlor, there would be an open casket, people would kneel before it and pray, then sit around and talk . Sometimes there would be wild weeping, but not often because the family deaths that happened when I was young were timely, not tragic for the most part. The next day there would be a Mass, then we’d follow the hearse to a cemetery in a parade of cars decked with little FUNERAL signs and then we’d feast on veal scaloppini and fresh manicotti. Nothing much to plan, everyone knew the drill. There was a whole branch that died off in Staten Island, so we’d take the ferry. I associated the Statue of Liberty with morticians in tuxedos and Mass cards. I do remember one funeral, in Brooklyn, when the wife of one of the brothers of my father’s sister’s husband came to a wake dressed like a flapper. It was the 1950s, not the 1920s, but that’s how I see her, slim dress, short skirt, festooned with a colorful scarf. The family reaction sent shock waves of social disapprobation so sharp it penetrated my childhood haze.

My daughter Liz once asked me if I believed in life after death. My instant response was “I don’t know about you, but THIS *indicates self* is not ending.” I know that the Pamelapolis is going on past this incarnation. The particulars don’t concern me, because the Mind that could create the universe is not going to be fathomable by me. Way above my pay grade. I do try to do whatever good I can manage without resentment because it makes sense- even it doesn’t come around, it makes life more pleasant for all concerned in the here and now.

Besides, I fully expect my writing to make me posthumously famous. I decided this when I was ten and I read Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, a Twain short story. In it, the soul of an obscure grocery clerk is met at the Pearly Gates by great cheering crowds of seraphim and archangels because he was a greater writer than Shakespeare, even though no one on Earth realized it. Emily Dickinson, Vincent Van Gogh, Wolfgang Mozart, those are my peeps. Of course I don’t want any part of the lives they lived in this realm: crippling social anxiety, repression, soul killing poverty, insanity, self doubt and bitterness. Who needs or wants that? Not me. I prefer my existence as it is, one that I’ve taken some care to achieve: long married to a man I met when we were teenagers ( we don’t annoy each other, which isn’t the low bar you might think), mother of two children, grandmother of four, and a life long teacher. Schools, at any level, train people to fit in, and I’ve embraced that. The system has its problems but it pays my bills. And I like my bills paid. And of course there is the matter of actual genius, lack of which might be the reason my writing isn’t famous now, while I’m alive. I don’t have to worry about that under this particular plan. Posterity can hash that out while the next incarnation of the Pamelapolis explores whatever waits ahead.

I once took an ill considered step towards arranging things to my liking once I am gone. I had just read the story behind the publication of A Confederacy of Dunces. The author, John Kennedy O’Toole, committed suicide eleven years before it was published. His grieving mother didn’t give up until she forced Walker Percy to read it. Voila, posthumous Pulitzer. So I told Liz, instead of a funeral, I wanted a reading of one of my plays. I didn’t care which — she could pick her favorite. She should gather a cast, invite eminences of one sort or another ( I was vague on this point ) and make the pitch for me. She was a teenager at the time. She didn’t say much. Really what is there to say to such a request from a presumably healthy mother in her forties?

But a week later she sat down next to me and very solemnly said, Mom, I had a dream that you died, and I was crying. But everyone told me to stop because it was just the rehearsal.

I retracted the request. I guess I’ll have to go with Montaigne on this topic and let anyone who might have an interest in the matter do whatever makes them feel better.