At the cemetery I notice Dad staring at his parents’ tombstone, the ‘1992’ yet to be etched next to the ‘1906’– below ‘George Fitzpatrick.’ Grandpa’s casket is draped in an American flag. An honor guard stands at attention on each side of the casket—two Army officers, a man and a woman, wearing olive-green uniforms and black berets. Both of them turn and salute the casket. They execute a couple more turns, saluting again.
Dad is crying. He puts his arm around me. “You and your Grandpa had some good times together.”
“The best times,” I say.
A third Army officer I hadn’t noticed, about thirty yards away standing amongst the rows of white and gray memorials, starts to play “Taps.” It makes me think of the two war stories Grandpa George would tell me over and over. One was about the time he was in charge of four German POWs—“a right decent bunch of krauts”—down at the Army Air Force base in Corpus Christi, Texas, and how they hid his rifle as a practical joke when he fell asleep under a tree. The other story was about when he served as a member of the honor guard that received the dead soldiers from overseas.
With his horrible eyesight, Grandpa was forced to remain stateside with the United States Army Air Force for World War II. I usually lie and tell people he was an airplane mechanic or even a pilot, but the truth was he spent the better part of the war painting big-breasted pinup girls on the sides of bombers. As one of the base’s semi-permanent residents, Grandpa was in charge of the honor guard. One day toward the end of the war, he was intently listening to the bugler on the tarmac as they offloaded the flag-draped caskets from a C-47 transport plane. As the bugler started into “Taps,” only then did Grandpa realize he had listened to the same person playing for three years. For no other reason than the fact he could carry a tune on a hollow piece of brass, this kid was never sent to the frontline.
“That’s when I knew your father would be a musician,” Grandpa said. “If I could get him to pick up a horn, maybe I could save him from ever having to pick up a gun.”
“Taps” ends. The first two Army officers fold the flag and present it to my father. They thank him for Grandpa’s service “on behalf of a grateful nation.”
I see Grandma Eleanor’s casket in the hole below Grandpa. I picture Grandma, a chain-smoking Methodist to the very end, chewing Grandpa George out right about now. Grandpa made sure they were buried in a Catholic cemetery. “Eleanor didn’t live Catholic,” he once said, “but she sure as hell is dying Catholic.” I imagine the late Mr. Shapiro handing Grandpa a potato pancake dripping with applesauce—just the way he liked it—and Grandpa saying something like, “See Eleanor, I told you they got into heaven, too.”
The soldiers leave. Dad is still staring at the tombstone. “You know, your Grandpa chose this precise burial site.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir. He wanted to make sure he and Mom were in walking distance of the pickled pig’s feet and turtle soup at Barringer’s Tavern.”
“That’s kind of gross, Dad.”
I expect him to laugh here. Instead, he turns away from the gravesite. I reach for him. “Dad?”
He grabs me in a bear hug. His body is sweating, shaking with grief. He mumbles into my shoulder. “Promise me something, son.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me, when I get old and worn down, that you’ll take care of me like we tried to care of your grandfather.”
A flash of Dad’s youthful face morphing into the face of my Grandpa—a freckled, blonde-till-the-day-he-died Irishman, with a nose and ears too large for even his whiskey-swollen face and thick bifocals that exaggerated the size of his eyes.
“Come on, Dad.” I hug him back. “Like you even have to ask.”