Bedtimes and Eulogies

Bedtime in our home was mostly a matter of numbers on a clock. At 9 o’clock, we four boys went to our one shared bedroom, laid out blankets on the floor, and curled up to end the day.

There was a time, though, when bedtime was so much more. They were rare, but there was a handful of times before I hit the ripe old age of 10 when my mom laid my head in her lap and slowly read from the pages of a picture book. My three brothers listened in, one of the few benefits of a shared room. On those nights, though, those stories were mine.

It would start with a sharp ache deep in my ear. I’d wake the entire house by the time she made it to our room with the bottle of medicine.

I’d turn my head, aching ear pointed up, and she would drip five drops of medicine into my inflamed ear canal. A twisted cottonball plugging my ear completed the procedure. The pain didn’t leave immediately; he medication needed at least 30 minutes to work, the time depending on the severity of the ache on that particular night.

I often felt alone as a child, even with three brothers, a mother, and stepfather in the house; my mom stayed busy with four children, rarely having time for just me. On earache nights, though… all of her attention belonged to me.

I relished in it. Milked it, even. I often claimed my earaches lasted a bit longer than they actually did. The sooner I felt better, the sooner the spell would be broken: my mom would return to the pragmatic, temperamental mother with whom we were all accustomed when she got up from our bed.

While she waited for the medicine to take effect, she would read a book to me. My favorite? Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. The original, mind you, not the remake or movie version. The creepy artwork, giant pancakes crushing buildings. The food took no prisoners. I found it fascinating.

I also loved looking at the pictures of food. The idea that you could stack four or five pancakes on top of each other and eat them?

Mind.

Blowing.

Sometimes, she wasn’t feeling Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; I was willing to accept Where the Wild Things Are as a backup. That was as far as I was willing to deviate from the greatness of Cloudy.

As we grew older, happy memories became increasingly scarce. In the early 90’s, my mother and stepfather went to prison on armed robbery charges. The four brothers were split up, then brought back together under the roof a single-mother household.

From there, our world became a revolving door of drugs, alcohol, late-night benders complete with drunken rednecks fighting at all hours, and abuse of every variety. My mother, for as much as she did for us as we grew up, was complicit in all of it.

When she passed away in 2012 of an opioid overdose, I planned her funeral. I got everything together, set up the obituary, handled the death certificate, and learned all about cremation and cremains. I kept busy, so I didn’t mourn; recent memories of my mother weren’t the happiest. When I thought of them, they didn’t affect me like I expected them to.

When I sat down to write out her eulogy, I wanted to memorialize happier times - not her recent mistakes or bad decisions in life. I dug into memories long repressed, squished down deep into the crevices of my subconscious. I mined for gold, the great times that get lost in the sands of time but can be revisited if only you could find the memory.

I remembered bologna sandwiches, with mustard and ketchup, for lunch – with each boy getting their first initial drawn in condiments, signifying whose sandwich was whose.

Then there was the Thanksgiving where my mom spooned turkey and mashed potatoes from a microwave dinner onto four plates, tears in her eyes. “Happy Thanksgiving” she told us, trying to not get choked up. I thought it was great at the time; we were getting Thanksgiving Dinner!

And then, the pièce de resistance: the feeling of safety, of warmth and love, that came through the hand that cradled my head on those late earache nights. The softness of her voice as she slowly worked through a story I’d heard and read so many times before. The tone in her voice when, after finishing the story, she asked, “How are you feeling, baby?”

I climbed the stairs to the pulpit in September 2012, ready to deliver a rehearsed eulogy. I stood in front of family, friends, and acquaintances who all had red eyes, some with tissues in hand. Everything weighing on my mind during the planning of the funeral was gone. All barriers were removed.

For the first time, I realized everything I’d just lost. The woman who held me tight, who cared for me, who made sure that I made it out of the incredibly bleak situation we were raised in. Still, I pressed on; I began the speech I’d written and practiced countless times.

I made it to bologna sandwiches before the first drops of moisture slid down my cheeks.

The Hungry Man turkey dinner brought audible sobs.

But, when I got to storytime, to the one time in my life where I truly felt loved unconditionally, and I had to speak about the mother who I’d just lost…

I couldn’t do it. For the first time since her passing, I broke down completely. And in that moment, I could remember the heat from her lap vividly, I could feel her hand on the side of my face. In front of dozens of loved ones, I was transported back in time….

…to a time when bedtime was more than just numbers on a clock. So much more.