Birthday at a Funeral
Today is my grandmother’s birthday. Cousins and nieces and uncles and other assorted family members gather at my house to celebrate. Within minutes the pool is full of toddlers gleefully paddling towards my brother so he can toss them in a graceful arc to the other side of the shallow end. My aunts congregate in a corner with their cosmos and margaritas and coronas to laugh and avoid their children for a minute. As my mother scampers from kitchen to grill to pool to basement with precision and experience, I sit and observe the scene.
Today is my grandmother’s birthday. She would have been seventy-seven.
I wonder if the youngest of my cousins know exactly why they’re here. I wonder if they’ll remember their grandmother ten years from now. I wonder how my grandpa can live with, raise a family with, and most of all love a woman for over fifty years then lose her in an instant. I wonder if he’ll be okay. I wonder why my father lost his mother and his job in the same year. I wonder if we have enough alcohol.
In the midst of my pondering I pause to objectively look at my family. I see swimsuits matched with pale skin and freckles. I see the some of the strongest tolerances for alcohol I have ever encountered. I see smiles and themed purses and food. Lots and lots of food. I notice nothing different from other Griffith family gatherings. Nothing is missing and nothing is out of place. Except for the seventy-seven green balloons in my basement.
These balloons are meant to represent my grandma. Once everyone arrives we venture out onto the fairway past my backyard to let them go. This gesture may seem cliché or tacky or silly to outsiders, but to my family, to me, nothing could be more perfect.
After meticulously unwrapping and passing out the dozens of green balloons, as a clan we storm the golf course. The wind kicks up as we walk. Not gently and calmly, as one would assume to be appropriate for the circumstances. There was no loving, divine intervention to coast our balloons off to the horizon. Oh no. Gale force winds attack my family. Not enough to rip the balloons from our hands, but just enough to make us look a little stupid.
I fight my hair out of my face and try to hold both my camera and balloon simultaneously. I have to giggle at the whole ordeal. My mom begins a countdown. At “one” we all let go and watch the balloons float into the clouds, drifting until they’re just emerald specks in the sunset.
As I write this, I imagine my grandma reading it. I can hear her contagious and unmistakable laughter ring in my ears. I can see her eyes full of light as she tells me the recent happenings of some distant cousin so quickly I can hardly follow: fast, but exact. She always spoke that way. I can remember sitting next to her on her couch, listening to the gossip and stories and scandals, not being able to get a word in edgewise, but not feeling the need to.
I think about her not seeing me graduate. I think about her missing my cousins wedding, my aunt’s baby. I think about her not being there to take care of my grandpa, about him not being able to take care of her. I think back to her funeral. I remember all the sobs. I remember all the visitors I didn’t recognize, I’m sure she knew each one. I remember watching my father’s eyes, waiting to collapse once I saw tears stream down his cheeks. They didn’t. I’m so glad they didn’t.
Today is my grandma’s birthday. Everything is the way it always is, the way it should be. The pool has emptied by now, everyone’s eating cake in the kitchen. Nothing is out of place, and nothing is missing.
