Dear Old Honey

Grandma Honey enjoyed her cocktails or hi-balls as she called them. She used to make pina coladas at holiday time or anytime. We would gather together at her dingy little grey apartment on Lepage St-my two brothers, Gary and Neil, Neil’s wife, Terri, my husband, Randy, & sometimes our friend Bruce, who lived upstairs. Grandma’s live-in boyfriend, Pat was an alcoholic, and was usually lying around in the dining room. He was a sweet guy, though; Dad used to refer to him as a “very amiable drunk.” When Pat had gone into the hospital once, however, he detoxed pretty obnoxiously, and the nursing staff was thrilled to be getting rid of him. Grandma called me to insist that I pick them up and bring them home; I helped Pat to get dressed, pulling his pants up over the adult sized diaper, while Grandma gathered up their belongings. She called out, “Pat, you want me to pack this straight jacket?” He firmly asserted, “Well sure! We paid for it.”

My family sat on the lumpy cot and the few assorted chairs in the dining room, as she busily moved about. She delighted in serving us. “You all want a pina colada?” Hers were the absolute worst of all time. Sometimes she ran out of her pineapple-coconut mix and even the rum, and would just serve milk and vodka, calling it pina coladas. Even her wine was terrible as it was the cheap sweet stuff, like Wild Irish Rose, and when the bottle ran low, she would stretch it with water and/or vodka.

She did love the holidays and having us all over there to visit-my dad, who didn’t drink anymore, and his progeny, for cocktails and food. Tiny and eccentric, she knew all about Bourbon Street in its heyday, regaling us with her tales of the French Quarter-gone-by over appetizers. For special occasions, she would serve her specialty, which were canned peach halves filled with a cream cheese-mayonnaise mixture. It was awful. We all politely ate them time and again, year after year. Gary told me as we drove to her house, “I’m going to tell her this time that I really don’t like those peaches. I just can’t eat them anymore.” Almost immediately upon arriving, after the customary kissing that Grandma Honey insisted upon, she said, “And Gary, I made your favorite peaches. Cause I know how much you love them.” Gary and I silently and discreetly laughed to the point of near explosion as he put one into his mouth and then another. Later he told me, “They really weren’t that bad today.”

“Well, good, cause you gonna have to keep eating ‘em now.”

Grandma Honey died of pneumonia in a Tuscaloosa hospital. She had only been sick for about a week. Stuart and I visited her in her final days, but I couldn’t forgive myself for not visiting her sooner, before she became ill. She had been asking me to come to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which was about 5 hours away, to visit with her, hoping that I would spend a couple of nights in her little trailer that she shared with Dad and Joanne, and to go out to lunch and dinner, but I never found the time.

Our second day in Tuscaloosa, for a brief moment away from the hospital, Dad took me to a little health food store that was nearby. He checked out the clearance items, saying that he always found good bargains there. Once he had bought a discounted bottle of glucosamine for arthritis and joint pain. At first he thought it was odd, he told me, that they were not only chewable but also “meat” flavored. When he finally realized that the remedy was meant for dogs, he continued to take them anyway, until they were gone. After all, he explained, he had already paid for them and they did help arthritis and joint pain.

Dad and Joanne arranged to bring my grandmother’s body home to New Orleans. My half sisters from South Carolina and their families came to town for her funeral. Neil, Gary, Stuart and Randy were asked to be pallbearers. My flood of emotions really surprised me. Not only am I a “wedding crier” but perhaps a funeral crier as well. I watched all the men in my life carry my Grandma Honey’s coffin, which was at once dear and moving. She had already made the arrangements for her burial. She wisely didn’t leave it up to Dad to decide what to do as he would have probably hoarded her. After the church service, we met at the little rickety graveyard/mausoleum where she was to be placed. My sister-in-law Terri leaned toward me, whispering, “What’s your dad got in that old bag?” He was carrying around a disheveled satchel that looked like it was from World War II. The raggedy brown bag and the raggedy brown dad blended together as one. I walked over. “Dad, what’s in the bag?” Solemnly, he said, “It’s your Nanny.”

“What?!”

“It’s your Nanny Edna’s ashes. She and Honey always wanted to be buried together. Ask Randy to come over here and pull open this coffin.” I let Terri know immediately what was in the bag and it was just the kind of comic relief that one hopes for at a funeral, we laughed into our hands. The situation would soon turn ugly, however. I looked over to see Randy, my proper English professor, and our friend, Bruce prying open Grandma Honey’s heavy coffin lid, and Dad slipped Aunt Edna, satchel and all, in there beside her. It seemed that the cemetery workers saw it too, and the burial officials were notified. “What did you put in there, sir? You can’t bury another body in here without proper documentation.” Dad was so furious. Of course he could put Nanny in there. They were sisters, weren’t they? And it was their wish, after all. How dare they tell him otherwise! It would nearly come to blows between Dad, the cemetery supervisors and the grave diggers. It was all too much for me and I began crying again. Terri put her arm around me and we sat down together on somebody’s broken down grave. We all waited around in the bright sun and intense New Orleans heat among the crumbling tombs while Neil, Gary and Randy worked to figure out a diplomatic solution that didn’t involve fist fighting and apparently eventually came to one. It would take paperwork, money and by the following day, the two once eccentric sisters would eternally rest together.