Pieces of My Family Puzzle

Whenever I spend time with my extended family, I end up wondering where the hell I came from.

How do the pieces of this puzzle fit together to make me?

This past weekend, for instance:

My aunt showing up to the funeral (and every subsequent family event) with her “friend” – lover? wife? platonic partner? – and no one batting an eyelash, because this woman has been around for the past fifteen or twenty years, and over time has come to be tacitly accepted, even loved, by the family. However, no one would dream of ever ALLUDING to the POSSIBILITY that my aunt and her friend might be lesbians.

At the funeral luncheon, my uncle giving advice to my cousin, his nephew, on the best kind of gun to purchase: “Now, if you're just interested in protection, get yourself a 12-gauge. But if you want to have a little fun with it too, a handgun's the thing.”

Bits of family lore floating around: the 75-pound fruitcake my grandparents made for their wedding, and all the lemon rinds my grandpa collected because they might come in handy for something; my great-great-great grandparents' poor opinion of Abraham Lincoln's father, who happened to be their neighbor (my industrious relatives apparently referred to Old Man Lincoln as “Lazy Lincoln”); the time my grandma's parents, fun-loving Swedes that they were, spent their last dollar on a dance; my great-great grandma, who chose to become the third wife of a Mormon polygamist – why? – why, because she liked the fellow's other two wives so much, of course!

A box of See's Candy (Nuts & Chews) and a miniature Snoopy, buried with my grandmother's body.

A pair of Prada sunglasses, inadvertently left behind by my brother.

A package of saltines, consumed surreptitiously during the funeral service by my elegant and normally very proper sister, who has not yet announced her pregnancy to the extended family.

My father's funeral address, delivered with great emotion and great conviction. It made me cry, it was so beautiful. He talked about his own grandmother's funeral, the memory he has of his mother, bereft, standing alone under the pecan tree in her parents' yard, and of what she said later to my father when he cried about losing his grandma: “You will see her again.” In my father's estimation, his mother's statement was not a comforting fiction. It was the truth. Said my father, “I loved my mother for that.”

My grandpa, standing by the casket, saying, “Thanks for being my sweetheart.”