Golden Years

by Andrew M. Greeley

  There is nothing dies but something lives

  Till skies be fugitives,

  Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,

  Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth;

  For they are twain yet one, And Death is Birth.

  “Francis Thompson,” Mary Margaret whispered.

  “‘Ode to the Setting Sun,’” I whispered back.

  And then felt guilty for showing off.

  The congregation was quiet and motionless as Father Raven returned to his chair in the sanctuary.

  The little kids, including my Siobhan Marie, brought up the bread and wine. She was in charge of course, gently and protectively guiding the smaller ones. Where did she ever learn to do that?

  As if I didn’t know.

  Then I began to wonder about my own death. I would surely die long before Chuck, who would live to be at least as old as his father. What would he do without me for perhaps twenty years? He would have to marry again. I would insist on that.

  Yet what if he died first, as Vangie did? I would not be the graceful grand duchess with a straight back and firm posture. I’d probably be a contentious, senile old fool, a great burden to my children and grandchildren.

  Neither alternative seemed all that attractive.

  Our best years were behind us. “Golden years” is a euphemism for “old age.” I never wanted to get old, but I had done it without even noticing.

  I could live to ninety like my ancestor, another Rosemarie. Chuck might live that long too, out of meanness. We’d both be doddering old fools—cranky, crabby, crusty, cantankerous curmudgeons. We’d really drive the kids crazy. Serve the little brats right.

  Suddenly it was Communion time.

  “We will deny no one the Eucharist,” Packy Keenan said with gentle authority.

  My priesteen, Jimmy, put the host on my tongue and grinned, I grinned back. I was terribly proud of him. Any young man who wanted to be a priest these days was very brave. He would not be a dead serious cleric like his uncle Ed, who didn’t know how to relax. He’d be a fun priest.

  I would have returned to the pew if Mary Margaret had not stopped me.

  Oh, yes, we had to sing the Ave Maria. Suddenly I lost my nerve. This was a Crazy O’Malley caper. We ought not to do it. Jane would misbehave. How should we sing it? The rest would follow my lead. Softly quietly, like a monastic choir from long ago, but with deep faith and joy.

  We were all there at the Blessed Mother’s altar. My throat was dry. My stomach was churning. This was a terrible mistake. We faced toward the altar. The Good April caught my eye and enveloped me in the most wonderful smile. Chuck was holding my hand. April hummed the key, and, almost unbidden, the enchanted words flowed from my lips.

  Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum;

  Benedicta tua in mulieribus,

  et benedictus fructis ventris tui Jesus.

  Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,

  ora pro nobis peccatoribus,

  nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen!

  We worked our way around in simple harmonies, one of them sung by the small ones, backed up against my vocalization. We were all crying when we finished, even the little kids.

  I hope you’re not offended, I said to herself, just in case she was listening.

  Then we turned to the Salve Regina. I noticed for the first time that Jane was not with us. But she had practiced with us, had she not when we returned from Europe?

  Chuck intoned the hymn and the rest of us joined him.

  Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae

  Vita dulcedo et spes nostra, salve

  Ad te clamamus, exsules filii Hevae.

  Ad te suspiramus gementes and flentes

  in hac lacrimarum valle.

  Eia ergo advocata nostra,

  ilos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.

  Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui

  nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

  O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria

  We really shook the arches of St. Ursula with that one.

  Back in the pew I felt much better. Okay, we’d be senile fools in another forty years, but we’d live till then. Maybe we would even have the grace to laugh at ourselves.

  I noticed that Jane had maneuvered herself into the front pew so that April was at the end of the pew, Jane next to her, and Peg cut off from her mother. I didn’t like that at all.

  Then my Chucky Ducky, looking trim and fit and adorable, came to the edge of the sanctuary, wearing a lavaliere mike, just as John Raven had.

  I suppose that I speak for all the family when I say that our father in great part made us what we are. He was a Cubs fan, I a Sox fan. He was born a Republican, though, through the grace of God, he subsequently converted. I was even before I was born, a yellow-dog Democrat. He was a baritone. I am a tenor. He was an artist and an architect, I am still in my heart of hearts an accountant When I began to earn my living taking pictures, I claimed that I was a realist. He was, early and late, a pure romantic. He loved the military and took great pride in marching down Michigan Avenue in the armor of the Black Horse Troop. I for my part hated the military with an abiding passion. He never feared the return of the Great Depression. I have only just recently and still very tentatively rejected that prospect.

  So we argued before I reached the age of reason and continued to argue for the rest of his all too short life. Yet we never once quarreled. More than that I took it for granted that we should argue, that he expected us to argue, and that I would have been an incomplete firstborn son if I wouldn’t argue with him. It was evident from the very beginning that my father delighted in arguing with me.

  At this point Jane pushed her way clumsily over April and out into the aisle of the church. She sobbed her way toward the back, with her husband trailing behind. “You bitch,” I muttered to myself. “You can push me around, but you can’t publicly insult and humiliate my Chucky Ducky.” Sensing my rage, Mary Margaret extended her arm around my shoulder. My husband continued his eulogy without a moment’s break. Well, bitch, I accused her silently. You can make a huge scene but you can’t fluster my Chuck.

  One of my great surprises when I returned from military service in Germany was that he would ask my advice, and myself not quite twenty years old. Where did I think we should buy a house on the Lake? What did I know? Yet he was seriously interested in my opinion. This was a new dimension to our relationship. I had been promoted from the role of dialectical adversary to that of a senior advisor even though at that time my WQ—wisdom quotient—was lower than zero. I was now both adversary and advisor, roles which persisted until a couple of days ago.

  Only later in life, much later, did I discover that he had polled the whole family about our beach-house-to-be and that we all had made the same choice. We each believed that we were the only one of the crowd he consulted. Each of us reveled in our role of the only coconspirator. I’m still wondering how he managed that consensus. Then I remember that his father had been a politician, albeit a Republican. Dad had inherited deft political instincts.

  He knew how to preside over a family so that almost all the time we wanted to do what he wanted us to. He never laid down the law. A father-husband can be that relaxed only if he knows his precinct well from careful observation and analysis. I’m not suggesting that Dad deliberately played this family game. By nature and nurture he had absorbed his style almost automatically. How else can you be a good father?

  Or a good president of a firm of brilliant architects?

  Dad governed us all, even Mom I suspect, by compromise and consensus. As the father of a brood of my own and with a wife of my own, I have tried to use the same strategy, with what success it is not for me to say, though there is no way I can claim to be the paterfamilias as he was.

  Only a secure and playful person can engage in Dad’s family style. He had to know who he was and what he wanted out of life. He was quite incapable of manipulating his children so that they would
reflect his own glory.

  Dad also delighted in women. He knew how to respect and reverence them. One need only look at the paintings in his books to observe his candid mix of delight and reverence. I have tried to play that game his way too. Again others will have to judge with what success.

  He also had great taste in women. I learned a lot from him there.

  People have sometimes dubbed us the Crazy O‘Malleys. Dad did not force any of us to fit that paradigm. But his family governance almost guaranteed our “crazy” style. We are men and women who experienced his faith and his love in childhood and were freed thereby to pursue our own destiny, always knowing that there would be a happy home to which we could return. He was beyond all doubt the craziest of all the O’Malleys.

  Now we are separated from him, in Jesus’ words, for only a little while. The Crazy O’Malleys have opened a branch office in the world to come. We all miss him terribly and we shall continue to miss him For you, Mom, the loss of your permanent lover will be especially difficult. However, the family has a tradition to sustain. And in the months and years to come we will rally around the Good April and continue to be the kind of family you and Dad created. With your help and God’s, we will prove that love is stronger than death.

  Chuck walked back to his place with the pallbearers.

  The congregation rose to give him a standing ovation. I hoped someone would report that to my ex-foster sister, the Wicked Witch of the North Shore.

  Dear God, I will be glad when this terrible day is over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chuck

  We waited quietly in the limo that would take us to Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside. None of us smoked. Yet the atmosphere was dense with heavy emotion, grief, and anger combined. Peg and Rosemarie for one of the rare moments in life that they were together said not a word, behind their veils. The Good April was also silent. I took her hand.

  “Almost over,” I said.

  Not really. There was still the ceremony at the cemetery and the lunch at Oak Park Country Club (which is not in Oak Park), the place where my parents and I had eaten supper after my honorable discharge from the Army of the United States.

  “That was a very nice little talk,” April said. “I’m glad everyone liked it. Dad always said our little Chucky has a way with words.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I really think it’s time that Ted do something about poor Jane. I’m sure she’s stopped taking her pills.”

  “What pills?” we all asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know what they called them. Tranquilizers of some kind.”

  “What did she say when she left the pew?”

  “I really didn’t hear her very well”

  “She said,” Peg replied, her voice tight, “‘I don’t have to sit through this shit.’”

  Ah, I was now certainly another target. Perhaps Jane thought that as the oldest she should have given the eulogy. Her outrage was perfectly understandable. Yet the only one really hurt by it was Mom.

  “What did she say to you, Rosemarie?” Peg asked.

  “‘You don’t belong here. You’re an interloper in our family. You’re not one of the family. I belong with Mom. I will walk with her.’”

  “The bitch!” Peg shouted.

  “I think she was probably jealous of you,” Mom said calmly. “She certainly never had any reason for that.”

  Ah, but the thought that Rosemarie had replaced her must have haunted her life. Whether there was reason for such emotions was not to the point. Rather the point was that we had totally missed her jealousy.

  “If we had paid closer attention to her throughout the years, we might have noticed it,” I said.

  “I can’t remember her resenting Rosie when we were kids. She never did like me very much. She didn’t mind Mom and Dad bringing a boy home from the hospital. But a second daughter. Before I was old enough to fight back, she’d slap me every chance she had.”

  “I don’t recall that,” I said. “But little boys don’t see what’s going on before their eyes.”

  “When Rosie kind of moved in,” Peg went on, “she was already a popular young woman at Trinity High School. She hardly noticed you, did she, Rosie?”

  “I didn’t think so. Now I’m sure she felt such emotions. I can understand what happened. I was an extension of you and she was now outnumbered and, in her mind, outloved.”

  “She was always a little difficult,” Mom said. “Very quick to take offense. We certainly tried to be nice. However, Peg darling, no matter how we tried, she never really accepted you. When I came home from St. Anne’s with you, she told us to take you back. She said that many times in the next couple of years.”

  I had been clueless.

  “Nonetheless, she’s hurting,” I said. “We should try to help her if we can.”

  “I’ll have to ask Maggie Ward whether there’s anything we can do,” my wife said. “I think she’ll say its much too late.”

  I shut up. This was not the time or the place to reopen the Jane question. If I had known about it, I might have suggested that she give the eulogy. That might have made matters worse. However, the few remarks in the car on the way to Hillside—three layers of suburbs west of Chicago—made my eulogy look pretty bad.

  No, that was not true. Because Vangie had probably never been able to break through Jane’s rage did not mean he was a failed father. It meant rather that in some situations there is nothing even the wisest parent can do. Rosemarie and I had tormented ourselves for years when April Rosemary had drifted away into the drug and commune underground. She managed to pull herself out. Jane never did.

  That was too easy a comparison. I shouldn’t be making any comparisons. What if this were my funeral and poor Rosemarie was trying to cope with a child who had resented us. Maybe Sean would be angry at us for the loss of his beloved Jewish sweetheart. It wasn’t our fault. We had been kind and sympathetic to her. She seemed to have bonded with Mary Margaret. Then she went off to Israel and within a couple of months married a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. Sean Seamus had not recovered. Mary Margaret, with the wisdom of a younger sister, insisted that he would be all right, but what did she know?

  So many things they can blame you for if they want to.

  A faint drizzle descended upon us as we neared the cemetery. My gut was twisted up in knots. The ancients believed that the bowels were the place of emotion. Not a bad idea actually. Emotional stress stirred them up. I’d had a stomachache since the call in Moscow.

  Funeral cortèges are intolerably slow. A ride to a cemetery was like a sentence in purgatory. Would we ever get there?

  Finally, we made the slow turn off Wolf Road into the cemetery. Someone appeared from the cemetery office to propose that we have the burial services inside the chapel.

  “I don’t think so, dear. My husband couldn’t stand those things.”

  We wound our way through the cemetery, which, like all such, was designed to create the impression of a maze. We were held up by another cortège that was slow in leaving. How dare they slow us down?

  Charles Cronin O’Malley, you are becoming more of a cranky, crabby curmudgeon every day.

  Finally, we pulled up to the spot—the burial plot my parents had bought forty years ago because they knew they should have one. Rather the Good April had insisted that they should buy one. How many memories must be flowing back from those days? We waited in the car until the mourners had been arranged around the tomb. I joined the other pallbearers in front of the hearse.

  “Great talk,” Vince whispered to me. “I could never have been that cool if someone walked out on me.”

  “Poor woman,” I said.

  Oddly enough, I was not angry at Jane or even surprised. Death seems to curtail surprises.

  My sons, instrument cases in hand, were arranging themselves at the head of the open grave. The rest of the clan drifted in that direction. The small fry, under Mary Margaret’s and Erin’s direction, pushed their way
to the front. Please, God, grant that this crazy move of the Crazy O’Malleys works.

  We carried Dad’s mortal remains to the grave site and lowered it to the stand on which they would rest until we had left and the coffin would be lowered into the ground. My brother Ed, perhaps another member of the clan whom the rest of us had forgotten, was going to preside over the services. In church he had not gone beyond the rhythms of the liturgy. I had never really understood him, though Rosemarie surely did. Mary Margaret had insisted repeatedly in the last couple of days that he was a totally cool priest, even if he was not as noisy as the rest of us.

  The drizzle, which had become rain for a few moments, stopped. The iron cope of clouds began to move.

  “We are at the end of the funeral services,” he began, so softly that one could hardly hear him, “though for the family of John Evangelist the mourning will go on, as will life and love. My brother”—he nodded in my direction—“with characteristic grace described him perfectly in his eulogy. I always thought that Chuck should have been the priest … Sorry, Rosie … Now I’m glad we have laypeople like him in the Church who understand what our faith is all about better than we priests. Our dad was larger than life, though it took us a long time to realize it. So is our mom. So too are at least some of us. We will miss Dad … Dear God in heaven, we will miss him … But we will continue to laugh and to celebrate life the way he and Mom taught us to. Oh, yes, there’ll be a bite of food to eat and maybe a touch of the creature to drink at Oak Park Country Club when we’re finished.”

  Cool, Eddie, I thought. Like totally cool.