November

There’s usually a 10-day period in November when the trees are still a riot of fall color, even though they’ve shed at least half of their leaves. The foliage is still full enough that it filters the sunlight but sparse enough that you can see things that you don’t normally see through the normally dense tree canopy. The light is just right, pale whitish yellow that makes everything, inside and outside, look achingly beautiful. It’s colder than I like but it’s not freezing. It’s a nice time of year. 

Thanksgiving usually falls either right in the middle or toward the end of this little interlude. I first noticed the appearance of ideal November conditions on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, so this year it will be toward the end. In just over a week, golden late fall will be over and winter will push and shove its way in here, uninvited and unwelcome. But it’s nice while it lasts. 

In a normal year, I am pretty much finished with my Thanksgiving preparations by this time, and I have just a few odds and ends still to gather. This is not a normal year, and I have barely gotten started. It’s Saturday, so I’ll grocery shop, joining the happy crowds of families looking forward to the long weekend and the football games and the leisured coziness of the last weekend before the Christmas rush is well and truly upon us. My heart is not in it, but life goes on. 

*****

Sunday morning, 10 o’clock. The November glow continues. Sunlight is streaming in through the windows and the trees and the light are so improbably beautiful that it’s just ridiculous. I should probably go to Mass this morning, but my heart is not in that either. 

My son’s friend’s wake is later today, and his funeral is tomorrow morning. His poor family has had a week of condolence visits and phone calls and preparation, but tomorrow they will have to say goodbye. Other families will prepare to welcome their college students home for the holiday weekend, while my friends lower their beautiful 19-year-old son into the ground. If I think too long about this, I will never get off the couch. 

Yesterday, I took my younger son and my five-year-old niece out for dinner. My older son was working and my nephew was at a laser tag birthday party. We finished dinner and then stopped at a very fancy grocery store, which has an enormous display of Christmas candy from all over the world. My 17-year-old son helped my niece pick out candy for herself and her brother, and he selected several things for himself and his brother. We spent $27 on candy. I handed $30 to the cashier, who asked if we’d like to round up and donate the change to a local food bank. I’d have done it anyway, but my son and I laughed as we left the store, amused at the idea that the cashier knew that he had us. “I mean, we just spent $27 on candy,” my son said. “He knows we can afford $3.” 

“Right?” I said. “What kind of asshole spends $27 on candy and then says ‘no thanks’ to a $3 donation to a food bank?” 

“That’s a bad word,” my niece pointed out. Poor child has no idea. 

After the candy binge, we went to the Hallmark store. My son wanted to find a new ornament for his little Christmas tree. He found two–Han Solo and Snoopy. Then my niece found some stickers and a pop-up paper doll set. Normally, I’d have let my son pay for his own purchase. Normally, I’d have told my niece to choose–paper doll or stickers, not both. Yesterday, I bought everything, plus a little crazy fad item that my niece picked out for my nephew. Right now, as far as I’m concerned, children can have anything they want. 

*****

On Sunday afternoon, we arrived at the funeral home to find a line of people winding around the building and through the parking lot onto the adjoining sidewalk. We parked and took our place in line, hugging and crying with our neighbors and friends. Between the crowd ahead of us and the crowd that quickly piled up behind us, there were easily hundreds of people waiting to say goodbye to my son’s friend and to say whatever inadequate words of comfort that they could think of to his poor family. There were so many very young people, friends of the boy and his 17-year-old sister and his two older brothers. Most of them wore black; sweet high school boys in black North Face and Champion hoodies and sweet girls in black leggings and dark sweaters. A few of the girls wore dresses or skirts and a few of the boys wore dress pants and oxford shirts and ties, but most of them just wore everyday casual teenage clothes, in mourning colors. 

They boy's parents didn’t care how these children were dressed. They hugged and thanked every young person. I know that they appreciated every person who showed up yesterday but there is something uniquely touching about teenagers not knowing what to do or say but showing up and doing it anyway, doing the hardest thing that they can imagine doing, as one last act of love for their friend. 

The boy’s mother is Irish, Belfast born and raised, and as we got closer to the family, we could hear her beautiful accent and her kind words of comfort to the children who had come to comfort her. My son had already gone to visit her earlier in the week, and so he wasn’t so nervous about what to do or say. He’d already done the hard part. When we came to the front of the line, she beamed at my son. “Ah, Aidan, there ye are. Thank ye for lovin’ him.” My son, speechless, just nodded and hugged her. We all spent a minute with the family and then it was time to go. There were at least 150 people waiting behind us. 

*****

If there’s anything worse than seeing a mother and father say goodbye to their beautiful 19-year-old son, watching as they watch him lowered into the ground, then don’t tell me about it because I don’t want to know. 

It used to be that Catholics who died by suicide were not eligible for Christian burial rites. Thank God that the Church has seen fit to change that teaching. Despair may well still be a sin but mental illness is not. The Mass of Christian Burial was over two hours long but it didn’t seem long at all. Our large church was filled to capacity and beyond. Mourners who couldn’t find a place to sit stood through the entire Mass. Nearly all of them followed to the cemetery for the final rites and burial, standing at silent, respectful distance from the grieving family at the gravesite, a mass of black coats and shoes and pants and dresses interspersed with little pops of color–a red handbag, a green jacket, a pale blue crocheted beret on a young blond girl. A few final prayers from the priest, a few verses of “The Parting Glass,” sung by the handful of us who knew the song, and the poor boy was finally laid to rest. 

My son and I went to the funeral luncheon, which was held at a Knights of Columbus hall, because that’s what Catholics do. We ate sandwiches and salads and laughed and cried and hugged one another and marveled at the strength of the boy’s family. And they are strong and graceful, but they haven’t been through the hard part yet. 

*****

That was just a week ago. Thanksgiving came and went, a one-day respite of peace and football and Christmas movies and far too much food. The weather was perfect Thanksgiving weather, sunny but slightly overcast, chilly but not cold, and perfect golden light. And that was the last day of the perfect ten November days. Friday was gray and cold and relentlessly windy. It's not officially winter just yet, but that was a winter day and today is another one. We even had a few minutes of snow. 

It will be dark by 5 o'clock today. It's two days until December and three more weeks of days getting ever so slightly shorter until the winter solstice, and then three months of winter, at least. Rest in peace, beautiful boy. The winter won't last forever. And we will see you again.