Good Mourning

I've been in Wisconsin for the past week for my Grandpa's funeral (dad's side) and opportunities to write have been few and far between.  The trip was definitely a bummer, because I always enjoyed grandpa’s company and found him interesting when I spent time with him.  But I was never really close with him.  Visits were infrequent (< 1x per year) since I left home.  My dad didn't have a lot of good things to say about grandpa's childrearing technique, and that will always be the first thing I think about when I remember him, but he seemed to gain a level of self-awareness in his later years.  My dad's relationship with him thawed as well in the years leading up to his passing.  At the end, the anger had melted away to make room for grieving and closure.  The whole experience was gratifying and draining for me and I'll leave it at that.   

Taking a trip home to see extended family is always a bit jarring for me, especially when I visit with my dad's family.  I'm not the black sheep of the family, like many other poker players, I'm more of the purple sheep.  My family is filled with farmers and handymen, and everything is so tangible in rural Wisconsin.  When my family works, their environment changes.  A piece of equipment that didn't work now works.  A field of hay is now bales of hay.  Where there was once nothing, now there is a shed.  When I try to describe what I do, I never get far before they get that glazed-over look in their eyes.  I'm sure it's the same look I get when they are talking fixing the manure spreader.  The glaze doesn't come from a source of disdain, it comes from a feeling of hopelessly large disconnects.  The payoff I would get from connecting with them on this level isn't worth the effort... I just don't see them often enough. 

So instead I just sit there in silence and observe and listen.  After grandpa's burial, everyone went to my grandparents' farm to decompress and shoot the shit. 

Men outside or in the shed, women in the house.  Just like it's always been. 

There are 10 guys outside drinking beers: three sons, seven grandsons.  Only one guy talks at a time, and it's nothing but personal stories.  70% are work-related, either some idiot fucked something up and they had to correct it and chew the dumbass out or our lovable protagonist fucked things up himself and went through hell to cover it up.  The rest are either about peripheral characters that showed up for the funeral or about the recently deceased ornery old bugger.  Sometimes I struggle to follow along, but the stories are clearly hilarious and engaging.  They have to be.  Only one person talks at a time.  This is the way it's always been, for as long as I remember.  I don't know how this social more started, but I know why it keeps going:  If your shit isn't together when you open your mouth, you lose the crowd. 

Another thing: no one checked their cell phone once in the two hours I was there.  I started taking notice early on, because I wanted to grab mine to take notes, and it felt uncomfortable to do so.  Soon it was all I was thinking about. 

Cell phones are sorta new to the rural Wisconsin community.  During grandpa's service, an older guy's phone started ringing right in the middle of the gospel.  The incident was painfully drawn out, because his phone first had to announce "INCOMING CALL FROM 9-2-0-BLAH-BLAH-BLAH" before going into the ring (On full volume, obviously, since the guy is probably around loud equipment most days), and the guy doesn't turn it off because he doesn't know how to.  It's probably a 30-40 second ordeal when it's all said and done.  Cut to a minute later and the celly is blowin' up again.  He's two rows behind me in the dead center of the pew and flanked on both sides by a half-dozen mourners, and the most waifish of the group might be considered "robust" at best (keep in mind we're in Wisconsin here).  In short, it's a tarp(!) and he ain't making a graceful exit.  I don't turn around, but I hear fumbling and aggravated sighing, but nothing he does works.  By the time the caller ID lady was done speaking her piece, the guy weighed his options and decided to answer the call.  And yeah, the church is as quiet as you're thinking. 

"Hello... I'm at a funeral, I'll call you later"

....

"Okay, bye"

Not a soul turned around (as far as I could see).  It's probably not the first time it's happened. 

I think it has to do with that tangibility thing.  A cell phone isn't a closed system.  Until you can get your hands dirty with a tower and a satellite, you're never really going to know how a cell phone works.  You push some buttons, magic happens, and you're talking to the person you want to talk to.  I think that's disorienting for these guys, who invest so much of their identity in their ability to exert control over their environment.  Bad things happen in the country when you can’t exert that control.  I’d bet the average number of fingers on the males aged 50+ at the funeral was 8.5… that’s what happens when you try to use a tool before you completely understand how it works.  Hell, at one time, they probably knew how every thing in their lives worked.  The onslaught of technological complexity needs to be resisted as much as it can to keep their identities intact.

It's obviously risky to create that kind of tension with our technological reality, but I think there's a lot to be said for the simplicity of lone storytellers and landlines.  Back at the farm after the burial, I marveled at the size and frequency of gaps in the conversation, and how meaningful they seemed to be.  A story would finish, everyone would laugh, and 30 seconds would pass before anyone opened his mouth again. 

I'll let that sink in.  30 seconds of silence around 10 of the people you're closest with. 

And I'll say something else.  Those spaces make room for emotions and processing.  Those pauses weren't awkward at all.  No one felt the need to discuss the pauses.  They were just... there.  Organically.  And you knew where they were going during those periods of silence, not just back at the farm, but during the entire week I was around them.  Even though there was a lot of emotional distance between grandpa and his kids, those fuckers mourned the shit out of that old coot. 

And when I brought up the topic here in my blog, my instinct still was to hide behind my four-letter defense mechanisms.

That probably means something.