Today is Friday.

So it should be time for a Flashback Friday post.

I have not written a Flashback Friday post in SO long, I know, I know, I suck.

So, let’s go back. Way back. ALL THE WAY BACK. To this past Wednesday night. HA. YEAH. Sort of counts.

PCG and I drove to Long Island to attend Bill’s wake. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it, work being crazy and various commitments littering my calendar and an hour and a half drive each way. After all, I had had a chance to see him, say goodbye, make peace. But miraculously, work ended on the early side, commitments were canceled and I took PCG up on an offer to be my car companion. So off we went. (You’d love to date me, right? COME ON BABY! IT’S WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND I’M TAKIN’ YOU TO SEE A DEAD GUY!)

He is a saint, that one.

Bill was laid out in an open casket.

I know people are normally freaked out by this but if you knew how many Catholic wakes and funerals I have been dragged to by my mom in my lifetime, it barely even registers with me at this point.

I am not kidding you.

“LAURA! WE HAVE TO GO TO THE WAKE OF SO AND SO!”

“What? I’m 11 years old! I don’t even know who that is!”

“SHE’S THE 87 YEAR OLD USHER FROM CHURCH! GET IN THE CAR. *NOW*.”

Rinse repeat. This is how you accustom your children to the idea of death. Please take note.

Because Bill’s illness caused him to limp, shake and jerk out of control constantly when he was alive, it was almost a relief to see him in that coffin. I can’t believe I just typed that. But it’s true. An American flag was draped over the lower half, a send up to his time in the US Navy. And there was Bill. Completely still. No shakes. No jerks. In a handsome gray suit, black rosary beads in his hands and an empty piece of plastic up by his head.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked my mom.

“YEAH! A FRIBBLE CUP. IS THAT AWESOME OR WHAT?”

It was.

My mother, the eternal joker, ray of sunshine, beautiful woman. Bestower of chocolate Fribbles.

There were only a handful of people in the funeral home, 90% of them members of my family or friends of my family who met Bill or simply knew of him. There were a few ladies from the nursing home. And then there was Anna.

Anna is Bill’s girlfriend. They met in physical therapy, both of their bodies ravaged by the effects of Huntington’s Disease. Although Bill shook and slurred and slowly lost control of his body, Anna was always far worse. Her arms flailed and jerked constantly and it took her so very long to get a sentence out because she stuttered and her head would flop around while she was trying to speak.

She made me uncomfortable because I did not know how to react to her.

I would stand there politely and make conversation. Wait for her to finish speaking. Say hello but keep my distance. She smoked constantly which my mother said exacerbated her condition and she often smelled of nicotine and other times like she could use a shower.

Bill loved her.

Together they would come over and watch television. And eat Christmas dinner. I was kind but distant, unsure of what to say. My sister-in-law could barely stand to be in the same room as her, often leaving just to avoid her and once, at the dinner table, my grandfather, shaking himself with the effects of Parkinson’s Disease, informed my mother that he could not sit next to Anna because she was possessed by a demon.

She was. But it was medical in nature. And definitely not her damn fault, thank you very much.

I was steady on my feet and calm when I entered the funeral home. Took in the sight of Bill in his neatly pressed suit, kissed my siblings and hugged them fiercely. And then I turned and saw Anna in a wheelchair.

She can no longer stand. She can barely speak. Her sister and brother-in-law brought her to the wake so she could say goodbye. Even sitting down, her legs and hands flew around helplessly, her head nodding off to the side over and over again.

“Is she like that all the time?” PCG whispered to me.

“All day long,” I replied.

“Oh my God.”

Much like when I visited Bill, I wasn’t sure at first if Anna would recognize me; she was so much sicker than I had ever seen her. But all it took was one look and she yelled out an incoherent greeting and when I touched her she grabbed my arm like a child and hugged it tight, pressing her head to me, nuzzling her hair into my shoulder. Instinctively, I threw my arms around her and whispered, “Anna, Anna, I am so sorry.” And I held her as she shook, as she tried to speak, as she stared at her boyfriend in a coffin, at what will happen to her all too soon.

Anna’s sister wept as she talked to my mother but I wasn’t close enough to hear the conversation. I can easily imagine the reason for the tears. Huntington’s Disease, unlike Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, is definitively genetic in nature. As a son or daughter of someone with it, you have a 50% chance of carrying the gene yourself. Anna has it. Her sister does not. Bill had it, his brother has it and will soon die of it and his sister does not. A cruel case of genetic luck.

I was introduced to Bill’s father, an elderly man, at least 80 years old. Bright blue eyes that matched Bill’s, dressed up in a suit. It was the first time I had ever met him and I watched him as he talked my father and as his gaze would wander off toward the coffin in the front of the room as if unable to believe what he was seeing.

My family filed into a row of chairs as a deacon from church said a few words about Bill. I made the sign of the cross, I dutifully responded to the readings. But mostly I cried, which surprised me. I cried and cried and could not stop. Clutching PCG on one side and my sister on the other, suppressing an animal urge to howl. Bill, so lovely, perfect, still and Anna, in agony, shaking, jerking, slurring in a wheelchair. It seemed hard to believe Bill would no longer be walking around my house. It seemed crueller still to believe it would happen all over to someone else.

The room was quiet as the deacon finished his speech, ended the final prayer. Tears ran down my cheeks in torrents and I was so very tired, my eyes burning red. The deacon moved over to Bill’s father in the front row, officially ending the service and as a sign of respect, Bill’s father stood up to shake his hand.

In doing so, the poor old man let out one of the biggest farts I have ever heard in my life.

I paused.

And then my sister and PCG and I bent forward in our chairs, squeezing each other, trying insanely hard not to laugh outloud. More tears rolled down my cheeks, now for a different reason entirely.

“OH!” reprimanded my mother later. “YOU TRY BEING OLD AND LOSING CONTROL OF YOUR SPHINCTER!”

“I know,” I said.

“DO NOT BLOG ABOUT THIS,” she said.

“Okay.”

But, much like I was when I was a child, I am a liar.

And I had to mention it.

Because Bill would’ve laughed too, I am quite sure of it.

He’s probably laughing now.

Because that’s what life is all about, right?

It’s finding the funny in an awfully tragic situation.

And as most people know, there is often nothing funnier than a well-timed fart.

That’s just comedy gold right there.

As quickly as the laughter came, it went and the night was over, ending in hugs from my dear family. Hugs for gorgeous Anna in her wheelchair. Hugs for Bill’s father, poor sweet old man who lost a son, who will lose another to the same wretched illness in a few months. I couldn’t fathom what he was feeling. I still can’t.

And Bill. Tall, sturdy, blue-eyed Bill. The man who always asked how my singing was going. Who wanted to know what living in the city was like. Who passed me the cranberry sauce at dinner and the orange juice at brunch. Who sat and watched football on my couch. Who dozed off in the afternoon. Who shook and slurred and jerked and limped.

Finally resting at last.

Beautiful Bill, we will miss you so.