“I try not to plan the nostalgic, sentimental moments before I visit. I just try to be receptive to the sappiness when the Universe sends it my way.”
— “Because I’m Down with the State of Pennsylvania,” Elephant Graveyard, September 2022
Three months ago, I penned that line in what has become one of my favorite Elephant Graveyards to date, in which I made a coincidental appearance at my great uncle’s funeral when I was really flying into Philadelphia for a Chili Peppers concert. A distant relative hailed me for traveling 3,000 miles just to see family, saying, “Mikey knows when to come home — the important things,” despite the fact that I didn’t do it on purpose.
The story ended with my proclamation that I would, to the best of my abilities, visit home as often as possible.
For the little things… Just in case.
Only a short couple of months later, I felt compelled to fly back to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. As dedicated readers may remember, I spent Thanksgiving 2021 in Los Angeles, enjoying fat cigars and even fatter turkeys. A not-so-insignificant part of me wanted to reprise my West Coast Turkey-fest this year, delaying my valuable time with family for Christmas.
An incessant pang in my heart convinced me to come home instead. And thank God it did.
On Thanksgiving Day, 2022, my beloved grandmother, “Granite” Janet K. Hughes, passed away, surrounded in her final moments by the family that she created.
Despite clocking nearly a century in age, her passing came as a complete, bewildering surprise. Mom Mom celebrated her 95th birthday at our local tavern just last May, and she had even been looking forward to road tripping down to Florida for Christmas.
As a former class clown and current blogger — someone who, by all accounts, loves to either hear or read his own voice — it takes an exceptionally rare occasion for me to be at a total loss for words. Well, this is one of them. I don’t generally believe in the mystical phenomenon known as “writer’s block,” but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been rendered completely speechless.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing though. I penned her obituary, for example, and one-half of her eulogy. (A reading unlike any other, during which I had the great honor of standing next to my cousin and Godmother, Beth, as we publicly venerated the woman who helped raise us.)
I’ve composed Facebook and Instagram posts and dozens of texts and emails about the funeral. I’ve even written this Elephant Graveyard three or four times before; none of the previous drafts satisfied me, yet I couldn’t seem to commit myself to writing about anything else.
Each time I abruptly stopped writing, crumpling up my notes or slamming the laptop screen down, all I could think about is Mom Mom’s reaction. Rest assured, she’s up there in Heaven, looking down at my family with confusion and pity, wondering what the heck the big deal is, anyway.
After all, my grandmother read the very same Elephant Graveyard I quoted from earlier, and she really enjoyed it. She would probably tell me to quit crying and carrying on and just write about something else right now. The feral cat I adopted, for example. Or the Christian rock concert I raged at, or the medical trials I participated in just to get a gift card.
All I can imagine is Mom Mom smiling at me, head cocked with a kind of bull-shit-detecting pity — the look she gave me when I told her I wanted to be a trophy husband just to see her reaction — before taking a deep breath and saying, “Sorry about your loss!”
Sorry about my what…?
Yes, if Mom Mom could hear me whine and complain about something as trivial as a newsletter, her only reaction right now would be to say that she was sorry about my loss.
Because, to her, that phrase didn’t mean quite what it means to the rest of us.
In the wake of her passing, I hear the phrase “sorry for your loss” day and night, like the bells of a clocktower, ringing in each passing hour as friends and family and colleagues express sympathy. It’s such a mundane expression — the “How are you?” of condolences — but it makes me laugh every time I hear it.
Why?
Well, Mom Mom got the phrases “sorry for your loss,” and “sorry about your luck,” mixed up. All. The damn. Time.
If she was out to eat, and you got served a hamburger when you ordered a salad, she’d say, “Sorry about your loss!”
If the Eagles fumbled in a heartbreaking home game at the death.
“Sorry about your loss!”
If it rained on your birthday, or your Amazon delivery was late, or the subtitles wouldn’t work while watching NCIS.
“Welp… Sorry about your loss!”
It was agony hearing her express her profound condolences to confused strangers when they mentioned a bit of bad luck, but it was also hysterical. The funniest part was that it wasn’t a symptom of some nonagenarian mental decline. It was just her granite-like stubbornness, the same quality that made her such a resilient and supportive parent, grandparent, and great-grandparent.
Although, yes, at times the Eagles deserve our sincerest sympathies, she could not seem to grasp it when we told her, “Mom Mom! That saying does not mean what you think it means!”
“What?” she’d say.
“That’s something you say when people die, not when they drop a fork!”
“Oh, well… Sorry about your loss!”
Sorry about our loss, indeed.
Because not only are we experiencing the loss of a lifetime — the loss of the woman who raised my mother and uncle, who helped raise Beth and I, who served as the loyal and generous matriarch of our family — I’m also experiencing a loss of function every time I hear someone offer their condolences.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” someone will say, and my brain will flicker.
“Yeah, it’s shit luck, isn’t it?” I want to say, before remembering what they mean, and saying thanks instead.
Oh, that’s right, Mike, I think. It’s the death of a loved one they’re talking about, not a wrong order at the drive-thru!
And then the water works begin all over again, this time punctuated by hearty laughter, and I can’t help but adore the frustration that I feel.
Losing my grandmother is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most brutal loss that I have ever experienced. Losing her on a holiday, after moving away, during a volatile year that has already challenged me with so many other changes, is just that much harder.
But there’s also so many things that I’m thankful for in spite of this loss. I really do feel blessed to have been home for Thanksgiving, arriving just in time to see her one last time. I feel a profound reaffirmation of my faith, and my confidence in the world around me, as every week seems to bring another sign from my Mom Mom and Pop Pop (who preceded her in death by a couple of decades) that everything is A-OK upstairs.
I don’t quite have a grasp on how to write about those feelings yet. Perhaps I never will. If I could somehow distill into words the warmth and amazement that I felt at watching two aimless balloons meeting in the branches of the pine tree that shades my grandparents’ gravesite, I would do so in a heartbeat.
These feelings are intoxicating, and vibrant, and confusing, but also reassuring. I can’t help but think that I’ve simultaneously loved and hated everything about this stupid mourning experience. It’s a process that feels like being swallowed by the sea while everyone around you recommends you just try breathing again, like you’re not underwater, drowning, staring into the deep, and wondering what awaits you in the dark.
It’s a process that has robbed me of my ability to write coherent metaphors in a comedy blog, apparently.
But as the words of sympathy stutter and fade with the passing of time, and everybody else’s lives move on while I’m still stuck here mourning, it’s the little things that rescue me, grabbing me by the lapel out of the water and urging me to catch up with the rest of the world.
In these moments, when finishing a sentence feels like the bravest act in history, the sound of Mom Mom’s voice reassures me.
“Sorry about your loss, kiddo!”
God bless you, Mom Mom. As you used to say, nobody else will.
Shouts out to…
Mom Mom & Pop Pop, for everything and then some.
The countless compassionate friends and family who have reached out with words of encouragement and love.
The various bartenders who have consoled my family in different — but not that different — ways.