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My unintended collection of memorial cards.
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It's early February 1967. I am 10-1/2 years old. I am about to receive my first card.
A phone call early on that snowy morning confirms that my best friend's brother is dead. The 'adapted for children' story goes this way: he was playing with his belt before bedtime and it was looped on his bedpost. His head somehow got tangled in the loosely closed belt during the night and he accidentally died.
I accept this explanation because I am 10-1/2 years old. Suicide is not in my orbit. My friend and I never talk about the circumstances of her sibling's death.
But I have his card.
This month, the dad of another grade school girlfriend died. The viewing is held in my childhood church because hundreds of mourners are anticipated. The queue extends out onto the sidewalk and down the street. We wait in the frigid winter night to honor an 87-year-old wonder.
Phil E. "Pops" Martelli was a St. Joseph University legend. He supported the basketball team in every way. His son began coaching the Hawks in 1995. Pops retired from the DuPont Company that same year so he could attend just about every team practice and game.
Mr. Martelli (as he was known to me long ago) was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and Hawks fan.
I now have his card.
These two cards, separated by five decades, are the current bookends to a "deck" of over 70 others. All are stored in a small, green wooden memento box painted with doves and flowers. Each new card, tucked inside without fanfare, acts as a placeholder for the deceased.
The keepsakes make up an odd blend of memorial cards offered to mourners when someone dies. As an unintended collection, they become the afterthoughts of souls who have passed through my life.
Each holds a soft echo: I arrived. I mattered. I am gone.
I'm not sure what moves me on this February day to look at each one, but I do. The feeling that bubbles up is an achy wonder.
The younger the deceased, the more I wonder about what could have been. What future gifts from them did the world miss opening? A different wonder surfaces when I consider the older person. Did they live the life they wanted? Was it satisfying? Sweet compassion pulses for them all.
Sliding the first few cards from my left to my right hand, I notice not one, but five cards saved when my grandfather, Vincent Labate, died in February 1979. Why would I keep so many? The answer makes easy sense to me. My grandfather was the first close family member to die in my lifetime. My 20-something self must have grabbed what I could as a sort of armor for the grief. The protective bubble burst later that year when my two surviving grandmothers followed him in death.
My teeny card collection doubled in eight months. Death became real from then on.
Included with my grandparents' cards are those for aunts, uncles, cousins, and all forms of friends: friends' parents and grandparents, a revered college Jesuit, friends' spouses, a friend's fiancee, and a friend's 22-year-old child. There is one name I cannot place, even after an intensive internet search.
For a quick breath, I think: after I am long gone, what is to become of this little grouping? In my next breath, I know. It will also be gone, as it should be. It's not the job of my children to hold on to these memorials of folks who are mostly strangers to them. It's enough to acknowledge that I savored these lives too.
George Harrison sums it up well when he sings, "All things must pass, all things must pass away."
A melancholy spreads as I deliberately shuffle through the pile, whispering each name. The memories ooze a sweetness that only Time can grant. The further away the death, the more manageable the pain, making room for other emotions.
It's comforting to know we can simultaneously hold mixed feelings, unwieldy as they often are. Sadness ebbs as joy flows. Happy memories percolate yet succumb to the pain of loss, again. It's a game of emotional hot potato.
The decorative box has become my tiny altar. In a world where buildings, statues, theaters, highways, street signs, parks, and even turnpike rest stops commemorate the infamous dead, the dear deceased souls within my world are remembered less opulently but no less deeply via one fragile card.
A phone call early on that snowy morning confirms that my best friend's brother is dead. The 'adapted for children' story goes this way: he was playing with his belt before bedtime and it was looped on his bedpost. His head somehow got tangled in the loosely closed belt during the night and he accidentally died.
I accept this explanation because I am 10-1/2 years old. Suicide is not in my orbit. My friend and I never talk about the circumstances of her sibling's death.
But I have his card.
This month, the dad of another grade school girlfriend died. The viewing is held in my childhood church because hundreds of mourners are anticipated. The queue extends out onto the sidewalk and down the street. We wait in the frigid winter night to honor an 87-year-old wonder.
Phil E. "Pops" Martelli was a St. Joseph University legend. He supported the basketball team in every way. His son began coaching the Hawks in 1995. Pops retired from the DuPont Company that same year so he could attend just about every team practice and game.
Mr. Martelli (as he was known to me long ago) was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and Hawks fan.
I now have his card.
These two cards, separated by five decades, are the current bookends to a "deck" of over 70 others. All are stored in a small, green wooden memento box painted with doves and flowers. Each new card, tucked inside without fanfare, acts as a placeholder for the deceased.
The keepsakes make up an odd blend of memorial cards offered to mourners when someone dies. As an unintended collection, they become the afterthoughts of souls who have passed through my life.
Each holds a soft echo: I arrived. I mattered. I am gone.
I'm not sure what moves me on this February day to look at each one, but I do. The feeling that bubbles up is an achy wonder.
The younger the deceased, the more I wonder about what could have been. What future gifts from them did the world miss opening? A different wonder surfaces when I consider the older person. Did they live the life they wanted? Was it satisfying? Sweet compassion pulses for them all.
Sliding the first few cards from my left to my right hand, I notice not one, but five cards saved when my grandfather, Vincent Labate, died in February 1979. Why would I keep so many? The answer makes easy sense to me. My grandfather was the first close family member to die in my lifetime. My 20-something self must have grabbed what I could as a sort of armor for the grief. The protective bubble burst later that year when my two surviving grandmothers followed him in death.
My teeny card collection doubled in eight months. Death became real from then on.
Included with my grandparents' cards are those for aunts, uncles, cousins, and all forms of friends: friends' parents and grandparents, a revered college Jesuit, friends' spouses, a friend's fiancee, and a friend's 22-year-old child. There is one name I cannot place, even after an intensive internet search.
For a quick breath, I think: after I am long gone, what is to become of this little grouping? In my next breath, I know. It will also be gone, as it should be. It's not the job of my children to hold on to these memorials of folks who are mostly strangers to them. It's enough to acknowledge that I savored these lives too.
George Harrison sums it up well when he sings, "All things must pass, all things must pass away."
A melancholy spreads as I deliberately shuffle through the pile, whispering each name. The memories ooze a sweetness that only Time can grant. The further away the death, the more manageable the pain, making room for other emotions.
It's comforting to know we can simultaneously hold mixed feelings, unwieldy as they often are. Sadness ebbs as joy flows. Happy memories percolate yet succumb to the pain of loss, again. It's a game of emotional hot potato.
The decorative box has become my tiny altar. In a world where buildings, statues, theaters, highways, street signs, parks, and even turnpike rest stops commemorate the infamous dead, the dear deceased souls within my world are remembered less opulently but no less deeply via one fragile card.
The following link is of George Harrison singing "All Things Must Pass" in 1997, in what turned out to be his last public performance.
