Old Ladies

This has been a weird April.

We had an eclipse. There was an earthquake in Manhattan. Our nation's most curdled minds were all very normal about it.

Our manager, Adam, and his effervescent partner, Richard, tied the knot in Paris at the beginning of the month. We couldn't make the journey as a family, so my wife gave me the go-ahead for a quick solo trip. I had friends at the wedding and we had a great time eating and drinking our way through the city and marveling at all of its whimsical bathroom fixtures. Like seriously look at this Star Trek-ass toilet are you kidding me:

My wife is an ambitious travel-planner. It is not uncommon for me to return home from a “vacation” feeling more tired than when we left. In her absence, I spent much of the run-up to my little Paris trip feeling this weird, phantom limb sensation of needing to plan more things even though I, a jazz musician at heart, am comfortable just getting there and then figuring it out as I go. Besides, I was there for a wedding, and wedding weekends have built-in schedules.

The one thing I did have booked for myself that weekend was a Saturday morning visit to the Centre Pompidou. I ended up blowing that off to spend an hour staring at my computer and trying and failing and trying and failing and trying to figure out coming back to Tulsa for my grandmother's burial the following Tuesday.

It feels kind of weird to say "Grandmommy" out loud as a thirty-eight-year-old father, but that's what we called her as kids. It feels even weirder to call her by her first name, and she married three times so honestly I'm a little sketchy on which surnames she kept with her over the years, and at any rate the more details I post about my maternal grandmother, the easier it is to steal my identity, so Grandmommy it is.

Grandmommy's death was not sudden or surprising. She went at the end of March, shortly after her hospice nurse told my mom she was on something called "active dying status," which feels like one of those tortured George Carlin euphemisms that is supposed to- but absolutely does not- make bad news more palatable.

Our own Andrew Campanelli used to have a bit he'd do where he would bring his hand up towards your face veeeerrrrrrryyyyyyy sssssslllllllooooooowwwwwwwlllllllyyyyyy, like over the course of twenty or thirty seconds, and then gently tap you on the cheek with his palm. "The slow slap," he would declare triumphantly. "It's so slow you don't see it coming!"

I can't tell you when I did my grieving for Grandmommy. I remember when she could still pick up the phone, but it was like trying to hold a conversation with TikTok: "who's that girl you're dating? She's so nice. I love you. Who's that girl you're dating? She's so nice..." I remember hearing about the nightmare ordeal of her third and final husband's passing, wherein they told her he was gone, and she was devastated, and then she forgot, and they had to tell her again and break her heart again and again and again. I remember her living in smaller and simpler places, until finally she was in a fancy apartment in an assisted-living facility. I remember visiting that apartment one Christmas, when she could still talk, just a tiny little bit. Someone asked her if she needed any help getting into or out of a chair or something, and her defiant wit snapped out like a switchblade: “No. Do you need any help?” That was all we got from her that day, but it was still pretty good.

I remember when the apartment became too much, and they moved her to their hospice facility. Hospice care is a one-way-street, so in theory we were nearing the end. Every few months, we'd get another bleak update: She couldn't eat solids anymore. The orderlies dropped her. She was getting worse. I don't remember exactly when Grandmommy moved into hospice, but I visited her there over Christmas of 2022, so she must have been "a heartbeat away" for about two years.

There's this thing in psychology called habituation. Basically, if you are exposed to a constant stimulus that presents no immediate threat to your well-being, your mind will start to ignore it after a while. Your nose has been in your field of vision for your whole life, so your eyes just stopped telling your brain that it's there. This is a good thing. Imagine being actively aware of the way your shirt feels, hanging on your shoulders and rubbing against your torso, every second you have it on. It would literally drive you crazy. I think habituation kicked in for me with Grandmommy- her decline was so protracted that it became an ambient sensation. It was so slow I never felt it.

The day after I got back from that wedding in Paris, I took my 3-year-old son to Tulsa for my grandmother's burial. It was my first time flying alone with him. Just as I was arriving at the airport, I got a text saying our flight was delayed. And delayed again. And rebooked. Or maybe I needed to rebook? It was a little confusing. Everything is a little confusing when you’re also trying to coax a toddler through airport security.

I wasn't totally sure what the deal was, but we did have some time to kill, so I parked us at a restaurant across from our gate. I asked my son what he would like to eat, which is how we ended up with red beans & rice and a small pepperoni pizza (this will come up later). My boy really acquitted himself, eating his food and playing happily, oblivious to the ticking clock and the nerves slowly tying themselves into knots in my stomach. Our updated ETA came and went, and our plane had yet to arrive. I started doing that desperate airport math of, "okay, if we take off at X time then I'll have Y minutes to get to our connection in Dallas..." I couldn't even get information from the gate agents because they were busy trying to mollify a crowd of about forty people who were all worried about missing their connection to Doha (the capital of Qatar; I had to look it up), which I have to imagine is a slightly tougher rebook than Dallas-Tulsa.

After the fourth or so delay, the math started to get pretty grim. Our plane finally arrived, and suddenly I was on the clock, trying to decide: board this flight and risk getting stuck overnight in Dallas, or cut my losses and go home? I tried to explain our options and their risks to my son, but he's three years old so his counsel was of limited value. The sun was setting. I decided to go for it. I spent the short flight from New Orleans to Dallas chomping on antacid tablets and holding my phone in front of my son's face.

When we landed in Dallas, I overheard a flight attendant telling a passenger behind me that he probably wasn't going to make his connection, and he should go straight to the gate agent to get a hotel sorted out. I started doing the math again: "that guy said his flight was at ten-thirty, but my flight is at ten-forty, so, maybe..." When we started to deplane, I muttered "got a tight connection" and pushed my way up as far as I could, gaining two whole rows and saving myself about forty-five seconds. I gathered up the stroller at the bottom of the jet bridge, buckled my son in, and started running. Fun fact: the C- and D-concourses at DFW are on opposite sides of the airport. Very fun, interesting fact. Five damn stops on the world's slowest tram, followed by more running.

We made it.

When I stepped onto the plane, sweaty and out of breath, I told the flight attendant, "boy, am I glad to see you!" We were supposed to be sitting next to somebody at the back of the plane, but there was a lot of empty space so I plunked us down in a vacant row and stretched out. I was feeling buoyant. The cabin lights dimmed and my son loudly declared: "oh no, it's dark and spooky!" A guy three rows back chuckled. Everything was going to be fine. The ordeal was over. We had won the day.

Remember the pizza and red beans I said would come up later? That was a dad joke, because about halfway through that flight my son threw up all over himself. When my dad picked us up at Tulsa International* Airport, it was well past midnight. In lieu of his shirt, which had borne the brunt of his emesis and was now wadded up in a plastic bag, my son was wearing my jacket over his bare chest, his hands lost halfway up the sleeves. I had checked a car seat, but it didn't make it onto our second plane due to the tight connection, so I sat with him in the back seat and told my dad to drive slow.

Throughout my desperate campaign to reach Tulsa, I sent my wife a series of texts documenting my frustration, my stress, and my spiraling doubts about the trip. I'm about to get stuck overnight in some cigarette-burned motel room in the demilitarized zone around DFW. With a three-year-old. I won't have our suitcase, I won't have anything to give him for breakfast tomorrow... Am I crazy for making this trip? My wife sent me a text that I still can't read without getting weepy:

A thing that occurred to me recently is that I don't remember ever actually meeting Shelley Marks. I remember seeing her in the crowd, bopping happily and absorbing the music in a way that is truly rare in a live setting. I remember seeing her and thinking, "oh, it's that lady- she's been to a few shows."

And then, like a retcon, she had always been Shelley. Shelley with the shoes, Shelley with the jokes, Shelley with the truth. Shelley who made a point to surprise us on the road: she would always pop up in the remote places, at the sparsely-attended weeknight gigs where her presence alone doubled the size of the audience. She would always come backstage for a hug and she would always get out front for the show. She wanted the real thing. If she loved you, she loved you with every fiber of her being. She outdid us all in so many ways. "Age ain't nothing but a number" sounds fraught coming from a stockbroker making a pass at a waitress in an airport bar, but Shelley wore it well. She wore everything well. She was always dressed for the runway.

Two Big River Get Downs ago, Shelley came to Hamilton and read us a letter that went roughly like "we've been through a lot, I'm so proud of you boys, what a journey, by the way I have dementia so I won't be traveling to see you as much anymore." That was Shelley. Love and love and love, and don't flinch when it's time to tell the truth. As far as I could tell, she was never scared or in despair. She knew she had done enough living for ten of us. Shelley went into hospice about the same time they put Grandmommy on Active Dying Status. Cancer all over. It was a shock to me. I'd just seen her a month or so prior at Zack's solo show and she seemed like her usual self. Alert and radiant and spilling over with love. We lost her on the day of the eclipse. Same day I barely made it to Tulsa. Same day my wife sent that text message.

I don't know if I would consider it a blessing of a curse to know when my end is coming. Shelley knew, and- again, like everything else- she wore it well. No fear, no regrets, just a chance to say her goodbyes and leave this world on her own terms. Her funeral was just one last party to plan, and plan she did: a standing-room crowd at Brooklyn Bowl, five speakers, catering from her favorite bagel place, a bunch of musicians (including us) putting on a miniature music festival, and, to cap the whole thing off, a round of tequila shots for the house. I heard a few phrases I've never heard at a funeral before:

"You know what she told me? 'I'm going to die fuckable.'"

"She was better than a friend with benefits- I had benefits with all her friends."

"She was so excited for this funeral."

I wouldn't have guessed that Shelley's funeral would have a stricter dress code ("formal funeral attire REQUIRED") than my grandmother's ("there is no dress code, wear whatever you want"), but, well. Not trying to belabor the point regarding months and strangeness.

Grandmommy's burial was a very casual affair- just a handful of close relatives. My dad wrestling with a FaceTime call to my brother until finally, mercifully, my younger sister rolled her eyes so hard it disrupted the Earth's rotation and dialed him in on her own phone. My son and my cousin's daughter making funny little kid noises. Everybody sharing memories and telling stories. My mom perking up occasionally and saying, "oh, I never knew that!"

I have lots of happy memories of Grandmommy: her wit, her kindness, going over to her house on sick days when my dad was at work and my mom was doing Junior League stuff, swimming in her pool on Easter and feasting on Christmas Eve and jumping off the dock at her little lake house in the summer. But this was the one I shared by her grave: One time, in high school, when my car was in the shop, Grandmommy lent me the keys to her sporty little Lexus. (For the curious: I’m pretty sure it was an SC400.) When I explained to my girlfriend at the time that the car was my grandmother's, she said, "that's a pretty hot car for a little old lady." At the burial, I heard a lot about how Grandmommy was "the cool mom." I just want everyone to know she was the cool grandmother, too.

In the end, the being there was worth all the getting there. My son is in his Precocious Ragamuffin Era, and I think it was good for my mom to have her favorite person in the world come over and pull some dusty books & toys off the shelf and gambol around their huge backyard and say a bunch of "from the mouth of babes"-type stuff. It was good for me, too. Being there allowed me to process a bit of the slow slap. It's weird to say "I'm glad I got to feel sad," but it's even sadder to feel nothing at all.

Rest in peace, you sweet old ladies. You were both funny, and glamorous, and fully giving of yourselves. The youth never went out of your eyes. You'll be with me forever.

PALATE CLEANSER:

IT'S JAZZ FEST TIME, EVERYBODY! This has been (last time, I swear) a strange month. It was like they made a whole month out of "just gotta get through this week." Some real highs and some real lows. And the weird thing about mourning is that sometimes the lows are the highs: the sharp, cathartic laugh in the middle of a heartfelt eulogy, the song that cuts you in half at the waist, the reminder that you have people you can lean on when your knees buckle. So I can't really say it has been bad so much as just exhausting in every sense of the word. I'm looking forward to sending this month off with a bang. Jazzfest is always a miniature family reunion- they give us a trailer backstage and we pack it well beyond fire code best practices with spouses, kids, parents, siblings, friends, management, and everyone else we've ever known or met or said hi to once. It's great. Familiar faces, hometown show. I'm sure at some point I'll look out over the crowd and see Shelley there, eyes closed, swaying back and forth, just for a second.

So yeah. It's going to be beautiful. Even if I'm already preemptively tired about it. Just gotta get through this week.

*: Yes, Tulsa International Airport. I think “international,” specifically in the context of airport names, is one of the most abused words in the English language. According to this explanation from the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, “international” is an official designation, and sometimes smaller airports receive it if they receive international shipping, or if passengers on international charter flights can enter the country at these smaller airports. BULLSHIT. Linguistic travesty. If I can’t book a direct, commercial flight to at least Mexico or Canada, you’re a domestic airport. I can’t believe the office of Customs and Border Protection would do something bad!