Crocodile Tears For My Brother

      The funeral ceremony for my Brother was held at St. Augustine church.

      We were all there – me, my Sister Lynn and her Husband Wilford; my Mother, Jake and his Brother Rolando and his family; Jake’s Mother and Father and my half Brother Geraldo and many people from my Mother’s early alliances such as my Aunt Rosalita, my Cousin Ryan, and my Uncle Peitro and many others too numerous to list.

      Everyone that is - with the exception of my Father and my Uncle Pip and Aunt Gita; as I said, they were scheduled to come after the initial services were held.

      At the funeral, my Brother-in-law gave a beautiful eulogy for James also noting as I had that James had been like meteor zipping through our lives.

      We all went forward taking our turn to pay our final respect to James. My handsome and vital Brother was laid out and stiff in the coffin, never to laugh or to cry or to hope again. Never would he know the happiness of a stable family. I wanted to weep for the life he should have had. I wanted to rage for the Father he deserve to have – but didn’t – but instead a Father that had constantly neglected him and in the end took from him resources he desperately needed - with no regard to anybody needs save his own. 

      My Mother had approached the coffin at my side and suddenly she let out a heart-rending wail of pain and a world of hurt that could not be soothed. She threw herself on my Brothers still form and her body rack with spasms and grief and her loud cries of anguish continued and was seemingly endless, unquenchable.

      Jake and his Brother Rolando were alarmed at my Mother’s outburst and they seemed more than a little embarrassed for themselves and my Mother public outpouring of grief. Both of them tried to pull my Mother off James as she is wailing, my Brother’s name over and over and over again, James, James, Oh God James!

      “Faye, for God’s sake, you got to get a hold of yourself, begged Jake!”

      “Come on Faye, you got to keep yourself together, chimed in Rolando!”

      I was too stunned to speak or move from the spectacle that I was witnessing.

      I was appalled not by my Mother’s grief… for as hard as it was to witness, I knew it was what she needed to do. I was numbed by observing that Jake and Rolando was more disturbed by what they considered to be a distasteful scene that they felt my Mother was unnecessarily causing – than the fact that my Brother had been cut down in his prime.

      As I think back, I believe that social pressures that were placed on her made it impossible for her to grieve intensely and fully she likely needed at the onset. I believe this was the straw that broke her psychological and spiritual camel’s back.

      My Mother was never given permission to fully mourn the loss of her son – her youngest baby - and as a result she never fully recovered.

      After the main funeral service, once the church had cleared, I excused myself from my family to pay respects to my Uncle Pip and Aunt Gita and to their second eldest Son Trevor. It had been years since I had seen them and as I approached them, I noticed that my Father was looking down at my Brother’s body and I could not shake the feeling that my Father’s display of grief was contrived, false.

      His face had a frozen look of studied sadness as he occasionally dabbed at imaginary tears running from his dry eyes. My Uncle Pip’s and Aunt Gita’s grief seemed real and even their second eldest Son Trevor seemed genuinely sorrowful.

      As they noticed me approaching, my Uncle and Aunt and Cousin met me half way and told me how they hurt from our loss and my Uncle who is especially a very deep and sensitive man voice kept quavering as he struggled hard to keep from bawling out right as he spoke to me. He and my Aunt lamented that they were sorry that they had not stayed in touch with my Brother, my Sister and I, and I could tell they had taken on more guilt over this fact than what was justified.

      My Father approached us and he still had dry eyes at which he wiped. I was reminded of actors who had been unable to work up tears to show appropriate grief for scenes that required this skill. I thought that my Father was as effective at faking grief as the actor Jack Webb was at not letting on to the audience that he knew the camera was on him.

      I was reminded of my father’s public attempt of displaying grief when I saw Diane Downs interviewed after her children had been shot and crippled by a shaggy haired stranger – one of her children and died from the shooting. And even more years afterwards I was again reminded of that day when A women with the last name of Smith cried as she was interviewed when she claimed that a shaggy haired stranger pushed her car with her kids into a lake in which they drown.

      Something about them had seemed as false as it had seemed with my Father the day of my Brother’s wake.

      Something about the expressions on their faces and something about certain underlying tones to their voices belied what they said and even belied the tears that the two women were squeezing hard to show.

      As it turned out, both Diane Downs and Mrs. Smith were the killers of their own children.

      Years later, I studied the science of body and facial language and I am even more certain that in my Father’s heart their was no true grieve that day.

      To add to my belief that my Father did not truly feel grief, it was later that night, after the wake, I had time to gauge everyone’s manner and facial expressions and voice patterns. On one end of the grief spectrum there was my Mother who could not be soothed and on the other end there was my Stepfather Jake and right with him at the lowest end of this spectrum were other relatives that had not interacted with my Brother for years.

      My Mother on the top end of the spectrum was understandable… she had after all had given James life, she had carried him for nine months and worried and cared over him for his first sixteen years and then she worried for him until the day he died.

      On the other end of the spectrum there was my Stepfather along with other people that were not very demonstrative people insofar as emotions go – unlike my Uncle Pip and Aunt Gita and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Lee and Aunt Rosalita. Also, I suppose the people on the lower end of the spectrum were there because they simply did not interact with my Brother very much, so it is understandable that their sense of loss would be less than other people that spent more time with James. 

      Notice that I did not put my Father anywhere in the spectrum? That is because I am talking about a ‘Grief Spectrum’. It is my assertion that he did not feel grief or loss and in fact may be incapable of feeling any grief or pain unless or course a loss happens to affect his personal needs.

      Later that night I noticed that although I would not say that my Stepfather actually loved James the way a loving father loves a son – the way Jake loved his own Son Geraldo – Jake’s general mood however was depressed for a substantial time thereafter. My Father on the other hand acted as if he did not have a care in the world, as he laughed and joked while he enjoyed his favorite activity – being the center of attention as he told stories about the adventures of Vincenzo. My Brother James was to be my Father’s Omphalos Stone

      I want to crawl away to vomit and weep in privacy.