Sam's Son's Dilemma

I had waited about a year after my dad, Sam’s, death to go back to the Roanoke Inn. In his last year or two of life, it had become his favorite watering hole, as he would refer to it. My wife, Linda, a flight attendant with TWA and later American Airlines, was usually out of town two or three nights a week during that time. Knowing that, Dad would nearly always call on Tuesday nights to invite me to join him on Wednesday to down a few together. The Inn had seen far better days, for certain, and the restrooms, in particular, were clearly fit for cave dwellers alone. There most definitely could be no “rest” at all taken in those rooms. A hasty exit was always in order.

I slid up onto the greasy red bar stool that night with some trepidation. At the same time, I was aware that visiting the ramshackle restaurant/bar again would re-kindle more than a few warm memories. Dad and I had been musicians, playing in a band together for the previous twenty five years. He played drums and I worked at the trumpet and so there would be images of our musician friends who had entertained us there after we had both stopped playing. There were also memories of birthday parties thrown by Dad for me or others and retirement get-togethers for our various acquaintances. The owner of the place, Eddie, a middle aged, long haired ex hippie who bore a strong resemblance to a Jim Henson-type Muppett, always in disarray, never failed to disappoint us. He was cheap so he never bought anyone a drink “on the house”. He was rude so he rarely smiled and his attitude toward my aging father had been condescending, at best. The guy annoyed the hell out of me and his manner dampened many an otherwise pleasant father-son evening out. The stale beer smell of his place seemed the perfect accompaniment for Eddie’s personality but on this particular night, I was unable to resist the lore of the memories anyway. One of those memories had a somewhat haunting effect that I hadn’t been able to shake in the previous year. Maybe the answer would be found here tonight; maybe not.

Eddie half smiled in the obligatory owner-to-customer fashion as he approached me. You’ve seen that look, I’m sure. I smiled back anyway and kept friendly, noting that his long hair was still unwashed, greasy like his bar stools and still way too long for his age.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you since Sam died,” he started. “Guess you really miss the old man, huh?”

“Yeah. I really do miss him, Eddie. But I’m just in the neighborhood for a drink tonight,” I lied. Why don’t you pour me his favorite for old time’s sake; a Bacardi dark and Diet Pepsi?” The dour, tee-shirted figure poured out his usual meager shot, fizzed in some Coke from the dispenser and half-slammed it down in front of me on a coaster. Pure, and unnecessary macho. Seemingly sensing my need to be left alone, particularly by him, Eddie avoided more small talk and returned to his usual; boring other patrons.

Giving the devil his due, Eddie did have a jukebox with one helluva collection of good music for the year 2002. No rap, no “lightening struck a tree and kilt my baby” stuff; just a lot of Sinatra standards, Tony Bennett numbers and even a few of my favorite Louie Armstrong vocals. Dad, a music devotee and avid collector of thousands of 33 1/3 rpm vinyls, had never failed to remark favorably about the selection of music during our Wednesday night sessions there but his matter-of-fact announcement, unrelated to music, this one night had fairly stunned me.

“I spent most of the afternoon yesterday across the street,” he told me. I realized that the only thing across the street from the bar was a cemetery, the Cathedral Cemetery of St. Jonas, and it took up about three full blocks of land. So I was intent on hearing more from Dad now…a lot more.

“Bought two lots. One for me and one for your mother,” he confided, as the shuffleboard echoed metallic clicks in the background. He and my mother had been divorced for about ten years, after a 45 year marriage, so buying a lot for her next to his was strange enough. Even more perplexing to me, as I quickly downed a heavy dose of my own drink, was the fact that Dad had decided on burial and not cremation. Louie Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” filled the room as I sputtered.

“Dad, you’ve told me my entire life that you wanted to be cremated after your death. You were always insistent. You lectured me. “Coffins cost too much. It’s all a rip off. Cemeteries: what a waste of good land!” What I’d like to know is what the hell has changed? What’s different now?, I demanded, trying all the while to make eye contact with him. I chose not to share my own opinion that burial was a somewhat primitive practice that made me uncomfortable, at best. He cupped his glass tightly with both hands and stared straight ahead as I pressed on for an answer that never came.

“We don’t need to get into all of that,” he responded in staccato fashion. “I just wanted you to know that I took care of all funeral arrangements for myself. In fact, I got deeds for the two burial plots just today. You won’t have to be bothering with any of that when ‘it’ happens.” I was, in fact, concerned at the time about the ‘it’ part of his explanation because Dad had suffered through some serious surgery and his heart was slowly failing him. Always the muscled and active athlete in his early years, he was thin, even gaunt, at the age of 79 . When we checked our blood pressure together at a drug store in the months previous, I was surprised that one could still be alive with such a low reading. But he was very much alive alright, arguing with the cashier about his bill before I could make a hasty, non-supportive retreat toward the exit.

I had been embarrassed with, and for, him when ignorant acquaintances at the bar would make a point of approaching him to ask about his weight loss. “Sam, are you sick or something?,” they would ask. “You’ve lost a lot of weight, man.” My urge to strangle them was palpable; to stanch the flow of insensitive blather rushing from those pea brains on booze. But like the good son, I patted Dad’s boney shoulder blades during these episodes and expressed my outrage to him later. He was as angry about the stupidity as I was but he had decided for both of us not to make any enemies over it. Because he was a fighter and not a quitter, he had also become a collector of medical information related to his several illnesses and, with a few drinks under his belt, he would share his confidence that cures were soon to be found…if he could hold out that long. But he didn’t. Most don’t. And then it was over.

As his expensive, but beautifully carved, casket was lowered into the ground across the street from the Roanoke Inn in early August, 2001, Dad’s secret went in with him. More real estate not available for other use but no one to complain about it now. No one to explain why the crematory went unused that hazy day and certainly no one to discuss how a Catholic priest came to officiate at graveside. Dad had never been to church in his 79 years that I knew of. And why Catholic? The entire family had been , in name, Protestant forever. Thomas Mann had been right: “A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.”
Maybe you’ve had your own family mysteries over the years. Things often left undone, unsaid and later unexplored? “We won’t ask and, therefore, don’t tell us” is the apparent motto for all such family- shrouded matters. Strangely enough, it seems to apply to even the outgoing, the otherwise gregarious and even outrageously funny ones living amongst us. My Dad had been all of those things in life and we, his family, enjoyed his every role and his every appetite for the good life. In my own 59 years up to his death, I had finally come to understand most everything about him: His dark and angry side, the loving and caring parental side, his non-religious dedication and fascination with the Christmas Holiday Season had all come to make more sense to me. Lawyers, in summation at trial, implore jurors to make “one harmonious whole” out of the scattered evidence. Well, by the end, Dad had evolved into one harmonious whole….except for his late, discordant declaration of burial and not cremation.

“Maybe it was because he was a retired fire captain?,” I pondered on my bar stool. After all, he had spent his entire career fighting fires. But if so, why had he been so insistent about cremation for so very long? I downed my final Bacardi and Coke of the night, paid Eddie and, over my shoulder, checked the faded Piels wall clock behind me. Midnight. Closing time and even a few hours at our old meeting place hadn’t prompted anything close to a satisfactory answer. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand,” I concluded as I pushed my way through the Inn’s torn screen door. I walked alone out into the warm, quiet August darkness. A full moon radiated all around. On the other side of the parking lot rows of tombstones glowed before me in midnight’s enveloping light.

Across the street and behind its stately

Story ID:	1430
Written by:	jim rambo (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Family History
Location:	Wilmington Delaware USA
Year:	2002
Person:	Sam Rambo