Four generations and a funeral

A journey to the center of my universe.

Even in what can only be described as middle age, I sometimes can’t believe that I’m a grown-up.

Strange, right? By some measures I’ve been an adult for three decades and it still feels like I’m growing into the idea. The weights, burdens, joys and privileges of adulthood don’t arrive all at once or magically appear once you turn a certain age, but they do hit you harder at times when there are choices to make.

Like this one: I was planning to go to a wedding last weekend, but instead I chose a funeral.

The wedding invitation from a friend arrived first and plans were made. My great uncle Jim died in March, with a vague plan for a celebration of life sometime in May or June. Plans solidified a month ago, and both events fell on the same day but several hours apart, with the funeral in the tiny North Dakota town of Sykeston where my great grandparents had lived and raised their family.

My mom was traveling to it. My grandma, who is almost 93, was going to be there to bury her brother.

I knew what I needed to do, even if there were moments of initial denial.

I also knew that the three-day travel commitment required of the funeral vs. the one day of the wedding meant my wife could not go because of multiple other commitments.

I knew that nonetheless I wanted to bring all three of our kids to be with family members they hadn’t seen in years and to experience this tiny mysterious town where I always tell them my grandma — their great-grandma, or Golden Gram as they call her — had no running water or electricity in her early life.

And I knew that even though almost all my days are filled with adult decisions and calculations, that this was undeniably the grown-up thing to do and that I am a grown-up.

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We had originally planned to stay Friday night in Jamestown, N.D., the largest spot along the way anywhere near the Saturday morning funeral in Sykeston, and then stay the night in Fargo after a long day at the funeral on the way back.

But then it became clear that there would be more family events after the Saturday funeral in Grand Forks, where my grandma lives, and it sure would be nice if we would be there, too.

So I decided instead that we would stay Friday in Fargo to catch up with my mom (who was flying in there from Florida) and Saturday in Grand Forks before heading back to the Twin Cities on Sunday.

It meant being able to see more family, including my dad on Father’s Day. It meant not having to drive as far on Friday, at least. It also meant getting up very early Saturday to make the 2.5-hour drive for the funeral in Sykeston and then more driving to make it to Grand Forks.

Life is a series of trade-offs.

We packed up the minivan and left around 11 a.m. Friday. I bought tons of snacks at Target. I packed a cooler full of drinks. I packed a bag full of everyone’s fully charged tablets and Nintendo Switches. In my Dad Brain, this would ensure that nobody was ever hungry, thirsty or bored.

And I was of course wrong.

We saw a car on fire on the side of the road not long after getting on Interstate 94. A little while later, in a construction zone, my oldest daughter and I saw a giant snapping turtle that my 5-year-old son didn’t see. He begged us to go back, even as I explained that we were in one-way traffic for the next 15 miles.

From that point forward, he basically eschewed all screens for the final 12 hours of driving on the trip.

“I just want to look out the window so I don’t miss anything,” he told me many times, even as I begged him to play Animal Crossing and stop asking me how far away we were every five minutes.

It rained hard for about an hour, but I’ve made that drive so many times I could probably do it blindfolded. The downpour let up by the time we needed gas, a stop that the kids always interpret (usually correctly) as a chance to get some fresh snacks.

We made it to Fargo in time to meet up with some of my relatives, who were paying homage to my great uncle Jim at a bowling alley. There was a large adjacent arcade, so the kids had a chance to run around and play some games before we headed to our hotel.

Then it was off to the hotel to get ready for dinner with their grandma and grandpa, who would then come back to the hotel with us to watch the kids swim for a while, and I was already playing the mental math game.

OK, it’s 5:30 now. We should be done with dinner by seven. They should be in the hotel pool by 7:15. Get out by 8:30. Everyone’s in bed by 9:30 to wake up the next morning at 6:30 to get to the funeral.

This is what actually happened: The kids were (predictably) amped up when we checked into the hotel, taking note of every minor detail in the room. We didn’t get to dinner until after 6, we didn’t get done with dinner until almost 8, we didn’t get into the pool until 8:15, and it wasn’t just any pool. There was a perfectly sized water slide: big enough our 11-year-old thought it was fun and small enough that her younger siblings were brave enough to try it (and then go down it endlessly).

At one point, a youth baseball team rolled into the pool area and started clogging things up a bit by going down 10 at a time. Our 8-year-old daughter was waiting for them to clear out of the way before she could go down, and when she did she caught the eye of one of the boys and said something.

My mom and I were sitting across the pool and watched it all unfold. I mused: “I think she might have said something to that boy, but I couldn’t tell what it was.” My mom, who had picked up already on her granddaughter’s penchant for swearing, replied: “I wonder if she called him a bitch.”

The grandparents got up to leave around 9:15, knowing that they also had an early wakeup and two-plus hours of driving in the morning.

The kids kept screaming and sliding, making temporary pool friends and not wanting any of it to end. I made increasingly fraught calculations about when we all might get to bed as five more minutes became 10 and one more time down the slide turned into an all-you-can-slide buffet.

We got out of the pool at 10:30, then did a video call with my wife. Two of the three kids were asleep by 11:30 and the other around midnight.

Saturday was going to be a long day.

I looked back at a note in my phone that read: “Who cares about sleep when you are having the best time of your life?”

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If we borrowed time Friday, we flat-out stole it Saturday morning. I woke up early, packed up the room and tried to let the kids sleep as long as possible. They showed some welcome urgency as we hustled through breakfast and into the car, but it was still almost 8 by the time we got on the road. The funeral was at 10:30, and the drive was 2 hours, 15 minutes.

“One stop, you guys,” I said in my best dad voice. “We only have time for one stop for gas and to pee before we get to the funeral and it has to be quick.”

We rolled through Jamestown, saw the world’s largest buffalo monument from the road and then an actual herd of buffalo as well. The 5-year-old saw all of it first, of course, just looking out the window.

About 10 minutes from the funeral, he shouted, “moose!" There’s a moose!” Sure enough, we all looked and saw the giant creature eating near a marsh near the road.

Very satisfied with himself, he recounted all the animals we had already seen on the trip. “I think I’m the first place animal finder,” he said.

We arrived at the funeral seven minutes before it started, which is a tremendous win in our family. It was in a church on the paved road in Sykeston, population 100.

I had been so consumed by logistics that I hadn’t really considered: It was the first funeral any of our kids had been to, and it also doubled as the first Catholic mass any of them had ever been to.

The curious questions came fast.

Are we going to see his body? No, Jim was cremated.

What does that mean? That his body was burned to ashes after he died.

Pause.

Where is Golden Gram? She’s in the front sitting down.

Why does she have a wheelchair? She’s having a harder time getting around these days.

Why are we standing up now? To sing.

Why are we singing? It’s part of the ceremony.

What is this thing for? You pull it out when you want to kneel down in prayer.

What’s prayer? We can talk about that later.

What are they doing now? They are taking Communion. It’s supposed to symbolize the body and blood of Jesus.

Wait, what? Shhhh. It’s almost over.

A procession to the cemetery followed immediately after, but all three kids needed to use the bathroom at the church. By the time we left, there were no cars in sight.

Our oldest daughter was worried that we were lost, but I was pretty sure there was only one cemetery and that we had passed on the dirt road into town. Our 5-year-old had spotted it and called it out in his special language: “I see a deadly garden.”

The ceremony there was brief, and we made it just in time. Jim was buried next to his parents, my maternal great grandparents Elmer and Frances.

Frances died five years before I was born and Elmer the year after I was born. I was struck by that and used the opportunity to remind our kids how lucky they are to have a great-grandmother who is still alive and who they will remember

She was in her wheelchair holding a cross, and they went to give her a big hug.

Back in town, a lunch was served. Our kids quickly became antsy and wanted to explore outside, and my mom told me there’s a lake a few blocks away with a playground.

We set out, not 100% sure of which direction to go, and our 11-year-old tried to ask Google Maps for directions. There was no phone service.

But then we walked around a corner, and there it was.

A cloudy, windswept day started to give way to a little more warmth and sun. A family was fishing in the lake, and they generously invited our kids to use their spare rods to try their luck.

Our 5-year-old was thrilled to see a picture of the large pike they caught not long before we arrived, and he was even more excited to hold a smaller one that they caught while we are there (even if he and his sisters didn’t catch any).

We saw a giant bird flying above. It looked like an egret, but the biggest one I’ve ever seen — way bigger than the ones we often see by the lake near our house in Eagan. I decided that maybe it was a pelican? Our son, who is obsessed with birds and specifically their wingspans, ran with this information and has told about 50 people subsequently that we saw a pelican.

“Their wingspan is about twice as big as an egret,” he tells people excitedly.

It’s another 2 hours and 30 minutes to Grand Forks, so I gathered the information for that night’s plan to regroup as we said our goodbyes. Pizza in the community room of my grandma’s assisted living facility, probably around 5:30 or 6. She moved there less than a year ago after being alone in her townhouse for many years, and I realized I need the address.

The drive was a lot of two-lane highways and tiny dots on the map. We found a small town festival in progress in one of them and stopped for ice cream. Later in the drive, the minivan got really quiet and I realized that all three kids had fallen asleep — predictably, of course, when we were only 15 minutes or so from our destination.

We got to my grandma’s a little after 6, the last to arrive at a long table where my grandma, mom and several other relatives are seated. It was the kind of day that feels like two days, and the kids were showing it. There’s a pool table in the room, and the two youngest started fighting each other with cues when they weren’t yelling.

They were hungry but they didn’t want pizza. They were bored because they were the only kids there. They wanted to leave and go swimming again, and I had to pull them aside individually and as a group.

Listen. I know this has been a long day. I know you’re tired. But we came a long way and we haven’t seen a lot of these family members for a while. And I really want to talk to my grandma for a while. We will go swimming later. But we’re going to be here at least another hour, and I need you to pull it together.

The degree to which they listened or pulled it together varies and is debatable, but their behavior can at least be described as “improved” from the low bar that had been set.

My cousin wheeled my grandma over to where I was sitting, and we had a chance to just talk for 15 minutes or so. I asked her about the move to assisted living and a recent stay in the hospital. Her mind is still very sharp, she said and I could see, but her body is having a hard time keeping up. “I never imagined I would live this long,” she said, her 93rd birthday not far off.

We caught up on what other family is up to, which used to be a conversation about my cousins but now is a conversation about those cousins’ kids — making up her 14 great-grandchildren, including our kids.

Eventually our 5-year-old wandered over and my grandma asked me to prop him on her lap. I took a few pictures.

Then it was time for some larger group pictures, including a four generations photo with my grandma, my mom, myself and our three kids. I tried not to think about how many of these photo opportunities we have left, and our 8-year-old helped distract me. She was in full-on entertainer mode, being loud (in a mostly good way) and keeping my aunts and uncles laughing.

We were the last to arrive and the first to leave, and our 11-year-old told everyone as we headed out that it was going to get pretty quiet and boring once we were gone.

All three kids had put their swimsuits on underneath their clothes so we could swim as soon as we got back to the hotel. They of course made more pool friends, and we invented a game that was sort of like water polo.

It was 10:30 again when they finally got out of the pool, and our 11-year-old literally did not believe me when I reminded her that it was just that morning that we woke up in Fargo.

“That was three days ago,” she said.

I’m sure they are all going to fall asleep as soon as we get to the room, but instead they wanted all the snacks and started a movie.

I started making more sleep calculations, but then I just gave up. Time is an expanding and contracting bag of microwave popcorn.

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We didn’t have to meet my dad and brother for Father’s Day brunch until 11 on Sunday, and the kids took advantage of sleeping in. They didn’t even try to sneak in the 45-minute morning of checkout swimming session for which they are famous.

During brunch, we decided that it has been a long time since all of us were together on Father’s Day. It feels nice; our kids built a deeper rapport with my brother, their uncle, who at 25 is barely half my age and can more closely match their energy.

We left about 30 minutes later than I wanted to, but I knew that even with the predictably ponderous pace of the five-hour drive home we would be there before dark.

It was a relatively uneventful journey as most return trips are. With the adventure in the rearview mirror, all anyone really wants is to get home.

We got back to the house around 8 p.m., the kids screaming “MOMMMMMMMMM!” as they ran inside. Everyone filled in the gaps of what they missed from each other over the weekend; I threw a pizza in the oven as I got ready to open my Father’s Day gifts.

It was after 11 before there was much time for any quiet reflection, our 8-year-old finally drifting off to sleep in her bed.

I had to be up at 6 a.m. for a long day of work, but I told myself I would be OK.

I looked at social media and saw photos of easy laughs and smiles from the wedding we originally planned to attend.

Then I looked at pictures from the trip. I found a clean photo of my great-grandparents’ grave marker that I saved to use at the top of this piece, but then I found the one with my 8-year-old’s pink shoes and socks inadvertently in the background and decided it matched the mood better.

I smiled at videos of our kids going down the water slide and pictures of them fishing by the lake in Sykeston.

And then I came to the picture of our son on his great-grandma’s lap. They are more than 87 years apart, but I see her in him: the expression, the lips, the nose.

I’m 44 years younger than my grandma and 43 years older than my son.

I’m a link in a chain that gained strength over the weekend.

I’m a grown-up in the middle.