No. 182 – Garden

Performer: Pearl Jam

Songwriters: Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Eddie Vedder

Original Release: Ten

Year: 1991

Definitive Version: Dissident - Live in Atlanta, 1994.

I had dealt with death before. My maternal grandmother, grandfather, great-grandfather and paternal great-grandmother all went to the sweet by-and-by in a four-year span when I was young. My great-grandmother’s funeral, which was open casket, was the first funeral I attended.

But that was when I was young to the point where the loss didn’t affect me, because I didn’t see those family members very much. Meemaw’s death just two days after my 30th birthday, mentioned way back in good ol’ No. 770, was different. It really was the first time I felt death touched my family.

The funeral was, well, not quite a major affair, but it was attended by many of Columbus’ business and political titans—including the publisher of The Dispatch, who got me my original interview earlier in 1994. I actually hadn’t started work there yet. In fact, my first day was that day.

The eldest male grandchildren or husbands of grandchildren were pallbearers. That meant I was a pallbearer, along with Scott. Everything was well-choreographed by the funeral home, so only briefly did we have to heft my grandmother’s coffin—when we lifted it from the gurney into the hearse.

What I remember most about the funeral other than the number of people in attendance was at the end when Debbie gave me a hug before leaving to go back to work. The last time I’d seen her was when I came to Columbus for my second interview at The Dispatch, and, as I mentioned, it had felt a bit awkward to be in the same house as she was. There seemed to be something going on there. Well … never mind that now.

I drove all my siblings up to Worthington where Meemaw would be laid to rest, and I tried to distract Casey by pointing out how we got to drive through red lights on High Street. When else do you get to do that?

The gravesite service was family only. I didn’t cry, again, I think because unlike everyone else among the grandkids I had perfect closure with Meemaw. In other words, I already had dealt with my Meemaw’s death in a way. This was just the finality of it.

But life carries on, right? One week later, the entire family was assembled again, this time for a wedding (just like in the movies) in Lansing, Mich. I was given the responsibility of driving my newly widowed grandfather from Columbus. I saw this as a great honor.

I’d known my grandfather my whole life, of course. I even lived with him for a summer years before, but he kept closer to the vest, so I can’t say I really knew him, like I did my grandmother.

The four-hour drive flew by as we talked about, well, almost everything. We talked about his youth and how he was conducted by John Philip Sousa himself when he played trombone back in the day. (What he explained—and usually left out of the story—was that it was him and about a thousand other kids who were “conducted” by the great bandleader as part of an event in Chicago.)

And we talked a lot about how he met my Meemaw when they were camp counselors in Michigan. He was a shy farm boy from Indiana. She was a big-city gal from Detroit. The rest as they say is history.

The wedding itself was fine. My cousin was worried that everyone would be too depressed from Meemaw’s death to be cheery at a wedding, but that wasn’t the case at all. Everyone was plenty cheery, although, truth be told, I was more cheery when Scott and I snuck off to the bar to watch the end of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Rangers and Canucks.

It had been a fairly emotional two weeks for the entire family. As someone remarked later, we all cried together then we all celebrated together. Before long, however, we all no longer would be together, because the eldest grandchild was about to become persona non gratia.