Okay, obviously I read her head slam the wrong way. Where’s that handbook when you need it. What to say and what not to say to a child who is concerned about death. I remember when Fionna was Ruby’s age. No, younger. Maybe three or four. It was after the split and I had Fi for the weekend. Joe came over for dinner, and afterwards took some portraits of Fionna and me. Then, after downing his coffee, he snapped open his chrome lighter. When he lit up a cigarette, Fionna dropped her jaw incredulously. “Those aren’t good for you,” she said. At my shrug he tamped out the orange glow on the window sill. Then he said to Fi, “cigarettes won’t be what kills me.” It probably sounds eerier now than it was at the time. She pat him on the knee as punishment and then went to find the cat. Joey looked at me and grinned. Then I grinned. We both understood that he had gotten away with something.
When he actually did die about two years later I was grateful to the Cafferelli’s for letting me do the eulogy. “I’m glad today’s a clear, crisp, sunny day. As a photographer and perfectionist Joe would demand that.” This was what I started to say to those sitting in the pews in Saint Edward’s church back on the morning of December 9, 2003. At the wake the night before, the undertaker handed me a couple of articles to read regarding eulogies. He was big as a sand pile and had a thick beard and wore a dark pinstripe suit. He was gracious, too, enacting all the pleasantries inherent to his profession. Like many other businesses in town, he knew the Cafferelli’s. “Joe Senior put this rug in thirty years ago,” he said, both of us looking down as he tapped the toe of his shoe to the greenish blue commercial carpeting. “Damn shame,” he said, “a father shouldn’t have to bury a son. Should be the other way around.”
I had been to this funeral home before. It was the one in my home town, where Joe and I grew up. Peter Kennedy’s wake was the last I had been to here. The undertaker told me in hushed tones that he was required by the Archdiocese of Boston to give me the articles, and then, whatever I did with them was up to me, but that it was his job to make sure I received them. He said that what I was doing was a special thing, that it meant a lot to the Cafferelli family, but that it was up to him to make sure I didn’t make a mockery of it.
I’ve never been sure if he was really worried about my degree of seriousness with the business I was to conduct the following day regarding my deceased friend. Or was it standard catholic protocol to shake out all the fun in things. Or was he clued in to my ways. “Basically,” he said, towering over me in his dark suit and deep cologne, “the Archdiocese wants you to keep it to five minutes and ice the funny stuff. There I said it. Now send him off however you want.”
I was grateful for that, so I read the articles. One of them encouraged you – the eulogist – to find out ahead of time what the readings were going to be and then thread your eulogy to their message. I didn’t know what the readings or their messages were, and it was too late to find out. But working at a catholic school I knew enough to play the odds, so I scribbled down anecdotes about patience and forgiveness. Two things Joe had little time for, unless absolutely necessary. Patience for having to repeatedly show Pete and me – we worked for Joey at different times – how to stick a room, hammer staple padding, trowel on cement. Forgiveness for Tom - who worked with Joe when he came to live with us in Watertown - for destroying a customer’s rug.
Tom at Beach House. Salisbury, MA. 1994.
This is one of my favorites. Joe ordered Tom to cut pieces of carpeting for stairs, so Tom cut them. But he cut them on top of the newly installed living room carpet. Tom’s cuts went right through both rugs, making a series of four foot parallel slash marks in the newly installed one. Joe had to rip up the carpet, order a new one, and go back another day and re-install it, all at his own expense. And all because Tom hadn’t enough sense to cut the pieces somewhere else. What an idiot. I remember being glad it wasn’t me. I'm not sure Joe had much voluntary patience in any of us,or that he actually forgave Tom, but time goes by and we have to live with each other.
The other article listed the following five guidelines: 1. Write everything down so you don’t ramble. This was sound advice. As a high school English teacher I’ve made a career out of rambling in front of an audience for a class period. Five minutes would not allow for that and I didn’t want to come off like one of those academy award winners who puke gush before getting the hook. 2.Stay away from potentially embarrassing material (i.e. anything involving sex, drugs or troublesome in-laws) Well, Joey never married, so that was a non-issue. The drugs and sex part, I had already relegated that for another time in the future. The article offered an example of a man who gave a eulogy mentioning his late father’s daily habit of squeezing favorite parts of his wife’s anatomy. 3. Share upbeat recollections; don’t exacerbate the sorrow and weeping. No crying, no problem. Joe would be pissed if I did, so excessive show of emotion was out of the question. 4.Don’t just talk about your relationship with the deceased; mention other friends and relatives. I wanted this eulogy to be anchored where it should be, with Joe’s family. 5.Give a copy of the eulogy to someone else, who can take over if you break down. Refer back to rule #3.
Five minutes is not a lot of time to recount a life. It’s not a lot of time to sip a cup of coffee. Yet, if a photograph captures a moment in time, and that moment is but a fraction of a second, then does it not make sense that five minutes could actually amount to an infinitesimal period of time? Think of all the moments that could fit into five minutes, three hundred seconds. It’s eternity really, and that’s sort of the way I ended the eulogy:
Phil and Matt on Northampton Bridge, Northampton, MA. 1987.
“…I like to think he’s got a studio set up there, with perfect lighting. He has a camera with a zoom lense. He’ll be taking pictures forever. Pictures of the special people who gave his life meaning.
Erin at Hotel Arenula. Rome, Italy. 1994.
Pictures of Erin and Phil and Giorgio. Pictures of his friends playing music, laughing and telling funny stories. Pictures of Italy. He’ll take pictures of Gianna and Brendan and Paul growing up. Pictures of Kim and Paul and Jeff and Victoria as they grown in marriage.
Kim and Jeff at Gianna's Christening. 2000.
And I know he’ll take a special picture of Carol and Joe on their boat off Marco Island.”
What Ruby was worried about the other night had to do with the unfairness of her being left alone after our deaths. It was Fionna who answered Ruby’s concern. We don’t have to worry about death now, she said. We just have to live and be happy. And she’s right, I suppose. But Ruby’s right about the unfairness aspect of it, too. While death is never fair to the dying, it’s not fair to those left behind either. I guess writing about Joe is a way of keeping him alive in some sphere. He still appears in my dreams, flesh and blood alive, sometimes center stage and other times sitting in the balcony. Either way, when I wake up, I’m grateful for his appearance.
