Last Monday began like any other day. I woke up, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, then let the dog and baby outside for their morning ablutions. The phone rang, and my wife answered it. I heard her say, “Oh no,” and saw her eyes grow red-rimmed. Of all the sights that cause me to recoil — a parking ticket beneath my windshield wiper, an IRS return envelope, Art Buchwald’s byline — the worst is the crying wife. Her 73-year-old Aunt Natalie had slipped into a coma and was on life support. The family had been summoned to see her, probably for the last time. Once at the hospital, we trailed past the pharmacy where we fill our allergy prescriptions, and obstetrics, where we mint new members of the tribe. In intensive care, Natalie lay unconscious, tubes protruding from her mouth. After bedside visits and magic words that we hoped in vain would make Natalie’s machines blip, the family, resigned to her fate, congregated at a nearby barbecue restaurant. Over pulled pork and potato salad, we told Natalie stories, and discussed what to do with her ashes. Let her children decide, somebody said. Scatter her over the Patuxent River, offered someone else. “I’ve got a bare spot in my backyard — it could use a little fill,” said a mood-lightening Uncle Leo, as Aunt Rose kicked him swift and hard under the table. Vanity leaves many families believing that they boast an unusually high number of “characters.” After years of dinner-table embellishments, individual tics are amplified into full-blown eccentricities. Every time Uncle Gus dunks his roll into the gravy boat, or Aunt Georgia sneaks a gin and tonic before Sunday School, someone will inevitably declare that their family is the zaniest. My wife’s family, modesty aside, actually is. Not the immediate family — solid citizens all, whom I’d be proud to have over for a dip in the gene pool. But there was the uncle so frugal he refused to run water during his showers, as he stood shivering in the tub, rinsing himself off with an iced-tea pitcher. Then there was the distant cousin who couldn’t walk past a night stand without removing loose change, and who’d sell off her birthday gifts, then ask for replacements. Natalie, too, might have seemed to hang from the strange-fruit side of the family tree, through no fault of her own. Childhood convulsions had left her mentally impaired — an affliction that could not suppress her gentle wit. Though her disease-prone innards functioned as efficiently as a rush-hour traffic snarl, causing her to be put on a liquid diet, she’d regularly get caught sneaking 7-Eleven halfsmokes and would tell concerned relatives, “My doctors only allow me to eat hot dogs.” At family dinners, she would vigorously hug us all, usually while we were balancing hot plates or attempting crucial pool shots. She’d ask for nothing in return, except the whereabouts of “the vino,” which she’d drink in greedy gulps out of a coffee cup that she believed gave her sufficient cover. Above all, Natalie was a physical comedienne. Well-acquainted with the miracles of modern orthodontia, she hadn’t much use for Fixodent. In the middle of conversation, she would shift her lower bridge out like a cash-register drawer, until adults reluctantly chuckled and small children screamed. But her best work came at Christmas. Some time between the honeyed ham and pumpkin pie, she’d disappear into the bathroom with a Food Lion shopping bag. When she emerged, she’d be in costume — as Ms. Wreath (her body lassoed head-to-toe in wreaths) or Santa (her beard would ride up, so she’d peep out the mouth hole) or the Living Christmas Tree, as which she adorned herself with tinsel and ornaments, strung herself with lights, then plugged herself into the nearest electrical outlet. One Christmas, I heard Natalie admit that it had been a hard, lonely year. “I’m praying for God to take me,” she said. Her poignant confession left us staring down into our wassails. But it was a side she rarely displayed, as she felt the least pain around her family. That’s the way families should work, when they’re at their best. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or sparkling conversationalist to participate. You just have to show up, bring a covered dish, and maybe plug yourself into a wall socket. For your troubles, we’ll embrace you and laugh with you and take you for granted, until we can’t. Then we’ll flagellate ourselves for not spending enough time together, except for the time that we did, which we’ll consider well spent.
