Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide
The white-bearded man finishes his song, waves his hand, and walks back to his seat. Before sitting, he smoothes out his ancient yet pristine black suit, removes his green plaid cap, and leans forward at the waist to ease his transition from a standing position to the chair. His name is Michael McPhee, and he was my grandfather's best friend.
I am seven years old, and huddled under a coffee table due to the number of people crammed into my grandmother's living room. They have come to celebrate the long life of my grandfather, from his birth in Kilkenny in 1915 to his death, three days ago.
Modern difficulties prevent the traditional, proper Irish wake from taking place. My relatives live too far away for the full three-day ritual, and while protocol would dictate my grandfather's body be upstairs, in his bedroom, it was instead at a mortuary being prepared for tomorrow's funeral Mass.
I know, because I saw it there, in a casket surrounded by flowers. Only hours before I'd kneeled with my mother, who was distraught despite being related to this man only by marriage, at the dark oaken casket. Wailing, she'd reached her hand slowly inside to grab my grandfather's motionless arm. I was embarrassed for my mother, making such a spectacle as she was, and instead looked at my grandfather's eyes, set in the middle of his fat, bald head, upon which lay two silver dollars. They reminded me of how he always gave me a dollar every time we left to go home from their house in Cleveland.
Later, much later, I will learn that my mother's wailing is an Irish tradition and she wasn't that upset.
"Friends" are not something of which my grandfather had many. He was a quiet, reserved man, dedicated to supporting his family and the Church. It makes the sheer number of people whom have come to this gathering astounding. Some of them speak with haughty brogues, and others in quiet, reserved tones. Each has a story of indiscretion or horseplay revealing my grandfather to be a far less "proper" man than I had thought. They refer to him as "Tommy." Most of them look as old as he did, or older, but then a man about my father's age stands up. His dark, oiled hair reflects the candles that burn above the brick mantle, with a sheen that hurts my eyes. He speaks.
"Some of you know me, most of you don't. Tom hired me as a young kid twenty years ago at the furniture factory. I was just a punk, didn't have one damn good thing about me, but he hired me anyway. I don't know what he saw, hell, I still don't. But I'd decided then that his was the last door I was gonna walk through, and if I didn't get hired, well, that was gonna be it for me. And hell if I ain't raised three kids on my salary from Callahan's. I owe it to Tom."
With this statement he raises his glass of Jameson's toward the ceiling. The adults in the room follow suit, with small tumblers of whisky, pint glasses of Guinness, or, in my mother's case, a conservative glass of red wine. Drinks mingle with the blue smoke collecting at the top of the room, the product of my grandmother's Virginia Slims and the older men's long cigars.
".a man who helped a young punk Italian kid make it, Salute, amico, salute."
The crowd, probably tired of toasting with the traditional Gaelic Slainte, murmurs the cheer in response.
My father's two older brothers, my uncles Kevin and Jim, slip upstairs, whispering and giggling to themselves. I embrace the rare occasions when I am in their company, as they always entertain me in their role as family comedians. Even at seven years old, I can tell they're up to something, and I quietly anticipate the forthcoming experience from beneath the coffee table.
Minutes later, they shuffle back down the stairs, dressed in my grandfather's clothes. The image itself causes a laugh to erupt from the audience; my uncles are slim and athletic, while my grandfather was a large man who openly disdained exercise (a policy that more than likely led to why we're here today).
With a gruff, guttural voice my uncle Jim begins his impersonation of my grandfather. He refers to episodes of his own childhood, and the many times he was disciplined at my grandfather's hand for repeated misbehavior, like the time he shot that gun down in the basement and when he "ripped off that Negro boy." Most of the stories I've never heard before, and they're told in Jim's colorful language that makes me blush and avoid my mother's eyes. I now realize how much of a miscreant my uncle Jim must have been.
The crowd laughs heartily at the performance and the similar one by my uncle Kevin. My father and his sisters interrupt, arguing their case as Kevin, wearing my grandfather's grey felt cap, describes the time the girls tied my father to the washing machine.
I am hungry, so I escape quietly from the protection of the coffee table and rush to the kitchen, where a heap of my grandmother's famous cookies awaits. Everyone had tried to tell her not to bother, but her Macedonian heritage demanded that since she was having guests to the house, she had to make baked goods for them. It was a clash of traditions; the Irish would order a widow not lift a finger at her husband's wake. But, then, we're not in Ireland, or Macedonia; we're in Cleveland, Ohio, and the adults are drunk, and singing, and cursing the name of a man fortunate to be in Heaven while they toil away here on Earth.
I eat an apricot dainty. I feel warm.
