Another Chapter

This is a picture of my mother Kathleen, her uncle Pat Indrisano (the guy with the glasses, on the right as one faces the picture), and her father, John Indrisano. This was taken, as far as I know, at Union Station in Los Angeles, when my mother was probably no older than eighteen. I think it is possible to click on the picture for a closeup. My mom was really a knockout when she was young.

I don't think there is a sadder trip than a bereavement flight. There were so many strange and astounding confluences of events which brought me and my siblings, and all four of my children, to East Boston for my mother's funeral and burial. My children had flown out a few days before Christmas to spend the holidays with their father in the Eastern seaboard state of his residence. They had planned--without knowing anything at all about my mother's medical condition (no one did--her boyfriend withheld this from us) to spend a few days in Boston before traveling elsewhere, the very days of her funeral, all arranged in advance without any indication anything was even wrong with her. It was so moving to see all my children walk into the funeral parlor and pay their respects to their grandmother. I personally would have had serious trouble going back East but for the fact that Mr. Strega found out his cache of frequent flyer miles was still good. They expired today, December 31st. My mother's funeral was December 28th.

The funeral director had grown up with my mother in East Boston, and he told us that his funeral home had handled all of the family since 1904 (in fact, he took pains to let my sister know that there's "room for more" in the family plot--just in case, I suppose). The director did not want to contact her abusive boyfriend for a dress for her--"Who knows what I'd get from him?" he said to me (Mom's boyfriend is apparently famous for drunken lunacy throughout East Boston). So the funeral director went out and bought her a pretty dress himself, robins-egg blue, with a little bit of darker blue beading for sparkle, and she really did look lovely, with her nails done and a pretty pink rosary in her hands, the exact color of the one she gave me for my First Communion forty-one years ago. My mother always loved to look pretty, and I am so glad this happened for her at the last. She truly would have hated to look bad for her funeral. I stood up along with my younger brother to eulogize my mother, and the priest who said her funeral service was a local East Boston fellow, a very nice man with a great sense of humor. The social worker who checked on her to see that her boyfriend wasn't neglecting her said that my mother would show the photo album I made her on Mother's Day this year to anyone who would look at it, sometimes multiple times!

My mother was buried in the same plot as Mamma Nonna (my great-grandmother) and many of the family--I actually stood at the foot of Mamma Nonna's grave as the priest intoned Mom's burial service. It was a scene straight out of both Dr. Zhivago and The Godfather--a big group of black-clothed Italians in a snow-laden cemetery full of gray, white, and black headstones, with a blue sky above us, but a piercing wind blowing and rattling the bare branches of trees all around us. My mother had always told me to cover my eyes when I was a kid whenever we watched the scene in Dr. Zhivago where Zhivago's mother is committed to the earth--"Don't look, it'll scar you for life," she said. On the day of her funeral, I lived it. It was hardest to leave my mother there--I looked back for as long as I could see her coffin, waiting to be lowered into the ground. I had all kinds of strange sensations for a few days--I felt I could not breathe because my mother had stopped breathing, and I felt as if I wanted to stay for awhile in the cemetery so as not to leave her behind, that I was somehow abandoning her to the elements.

There were some brighter aspects to the trip--I paid a visit of respect to elderly relatives who could not attend her service, and had a great time with my 97-year-old aunt, who is bedridden, but beautifully cared for in her own home, and whose memory is sharp as a tack. I love them all so much. And I got to see the old family home and the streets of the East Boston neighborhood where all these people walked and lived their lives--the stories of which I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life and which I pray I am giving some justice to in my book.

I want to thank everyone who has sent condolences and comments in the last few days. The death of a parent is excruciatingly difficult and sad--but I have no regrets about the relationship I had with my mother, which was, at the end of her life, a loving one, as best we were able to go about it. I believe my beautiful mother is in a place of rest and light with all the people who loved her and have gone before her, and this brings me comfort in the midst of very deep sorrow.