The Wrong Funeral

Phillipe’s is a hotspot in Los Angeles. Hipsters fill the room for a good sandwich but complain about how there are no vegan options in a restaurant known for roast beef sandwiches. At least that’s what happens in today’s time. When I was younger it was our hotspot. Grandpa David's favorite joint. I can still smell the hay that covers the concrete floor, I can still see the crowds of people and taste the freshly cut roast beef on a homemade French roll. Phillipe’s also makes their own spicy mustard. The men in my family always get it and dump it on their sandwiches, but if I’m being honest, their mustard is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. It tastes like mud mixed with mustard seed and cayenne pepper. It completely overtakes the meal and leaves a raunchy taste in your mouth for the rest of the day.

Grandpa David took us to Phillipe’s all the time. If we couldn’t eat at the restaurant we brought it back to my grandparents’ house and ate together. I can’t remember the last time Grandpa ate Phillipe’s with us. It’s been almost seven years since he died. I remember the morning I got the news. I was lying on the couch waiting for my mom to take me to school, we still had some time before we had to get in the car. The house phone rang and my mom took the call while I watched TV. When she hung up she gave me the news and I immediately started crying. My first thought was that I had lost a family member. I wasn’t close to him but I’d lost him. I couldn’t believe it. Mom told me I didn’t have to go to school if I didn’t want to, but I decided that going to school would be a good distraction; my friends knew better than anyone how to comfort me. I sat at my desk most of the day blankly staring around the room.

Grandpa died in his sleep and the weeks following his death were some of the saddest I’ve experienced in my young life. Grandma Francis insisted on getting rid of anything to remind her of him. She threw out his clothes, the mattress they slept on, the pink recliner that he sat on every day. We couldn’t so much as mention his name. That was in May 2010. As far as I can remember, Christmas that year wasn’t very different than any other.

It’s been a while since we’ve visited my dad’s side of the family for Christmas. I still remember each visit, even though they all tend to meddle together because every year we eat the same food, drink the same sodas, see the same people, and generally have the same conversations. Uncle Barry makes a roast out on the barbeque, Jenna and Elaine are baking some sort of oddball side dish, Aunt Didi makes the same bland mashed potatoes, and Uncle Devon always makes some alcoholic concoction to share with Uncle Barry. My older family members such as my grandma and my aunts ask me how I’m doing in school, what my degree is, and if there’s a boy in my life yet. I force myself to answer as politely as possible that I’m doing good in school and love it in Northern California, I’m studying for a business degree, and no I don’t have a boyfriend. I conveniently leave out the fact that I’m gay to avoid the harsh judgments I know they’ll direct at me.

My brothers and I rush around during the morning at our own house to get ready, mom makes sure everyone looks presentable, and we have a dessert or bottled soda to bring along with the presents for my cousins. We pack up the car and drive for an hour to an hour and a half to get to Aunt Didi's house on the hill and trudge ourselves inside to make our rounds. The couch is always filled with the same people: First, there’s Grandma on the end of the couch and next to her is her sister, who we know by Auntie. Next to Auntie is Lil’ Lisa and then Uncle Devon who squeezes into the corner between Lisa and my mom. It’s Grandpa David's seat that I can’t picture anymore. We still aren’t allowed to talk about him to this day and therefore his seat has been eradicated from the family, everywhere we go.

When I think back on his funeral and his wake I can’t help but feel remorse, not just because he’s gone but because of how everything happened. I wasn’t close with him but my brothers were his favorite grandsons. There were a lot of tears in the funeral home for his service. He had a closed casket, not because he was killed harshly like by gun wounds. His lungs gave out from emphysema. He died peacefully, but he lived in pain. His casket was closed because Grandma didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want anyone to see him. For the most part, his funeral was beautiful. My dad spoke about Grandpa coaching him and his childhood friend in their baseball team as kids and there was a short slideshow filled mainly with pictures from old weddings. I remember my Aunt Wendy getting up to talk about when she first met my grandpa and how he called her “stormy” like it was his nickname for her, but my mom whispered in my ear that he called her “windy” because he didn’t hear her right. My immediate family and I were slightly upset with her idiocy while speaking. Grandpa didn’t even like her that much. Even more upsetting was that my other aunt and her son spoke at the altar. No one liked them nor did we want to hear either of them speak. Grandpa thought my aunt was horrible, at least according to what he told my mom.

Yet with all that said, the absolute worst things about his funeral were seeing my Grandma receive his American flag for his service in the U.S. Navy and his wake. After the service, we got in our cars and drove to the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale and gathered around the wall they were going to lock him up in. It was hot outside and in black clothing the weather was unbearable. We listened to the trumpets blaring out Taps and watched as the procedural folding of the flag took place. I don’t remember if Grandma was crying or not when she received the flag, tightly folded into a triangle, but I like to think that she was.

For the wake, we all gathered at some random Italian restaurant and everyone was smiling. I can still see the room, walls shaded with Tuscany yellow and brown were covered with classic Italian pictures of buildings and people in golden frames. Long, dark brown tables with my family laughing and acting as if this were some normal family gathering. His wake shouldn’t have been at some Italian restaurant that had no meaning to him. It should have been at Phillipe’s. We should have gotten double dipped roast beef sandwiches and spread that disgusting dirt mustard on the bread and ate in silence back at his house. He shouldn’t be shoved into a cement wall with hundreds of dead strangers. It should’ve been someone else. No doubt we were at the wrong funeral, yet Grandpa is still locked inside the wall in a casket that wasn’t open and never again will be.