Joseph Maynard Mackey Sr. [born 1917 – died 2001]

The funeral home was a converted late century mansion.  The gentleman holding the door was wearing brown pants and brown shoes; with a tuxedo tails jacket that looked more like a costume for someone pretending they worked for a funeral home than one who actually did.  My family, who had traveled twenty plus hours to arrive on time, walked up the stairs and entered the room.  It was full of roses and chairs, a piano at one end and on the other I supposed my grandfather.  It was where you immediately looked when you walked into the room.  You couldn’t help it.  Even if you didn’t want to you found yourself wondering what was down there.  The large dark silver coffin with polished silver handles and pure white silk.  Sprays of red and yellow roses surrounded it.  There was a rose for each grandkid and great-grandkid. It was cascaded by lights of red and blue almost bringing the figure to life.  Being one who has an appreciation for the lighting at concerts and galleries I was impressed by the washes of color and focused beams that were placed directly on my grandfathers face.  There lying among all of the padded silk was my grandfather, Joseph Maynard Mackey Sr., looking quite peaceful and content about the whole situation. 

The crooked nose only slightly resembled the nose that I remember him having.  The nose that I remember was much larger and looked more like my own.  The tuft of silver hair was gently combed and I can not remember him combing ever.  Unless it had always been done early in the morning before I had ever seen him and since been blown out of place.  He was dressed in a dark suit and tie.  I was told once the reason that the Mackey’s did not like to wear ties was because of heritage as outlaws in Scotland.  It reminded us of a rope around our neck.  No one likes to be reminded of such things.  I think I will share that with my children someday when they say they feel uncomfortable with a tie on.  The tie he was wearing was identical to the one I had on.  It was the Mackay tartan, a plaid of dark blues and greens.  He and my grandmother had been tracing our genealogy and had found out where we had come from.  These things are always good to be reminded of. 

I had been in Scotland just six months before.  He never was able to go, but was overjoyed to know that a Mackey had made it back to the homeland.  Maybe he wanted to know that our homeland was as friendly and full of fighters as the books said.  That it was as green and grand as he had always hoped.  As I looked down at the tie I had on I remembered the two weeks in Scotland with my wife were both grand and frightening.  We were unable to leave who we were on this side of the ocean.  Who we were, and who we are, is two people trying to figure out how to hold life together and sometimes it still falls apart.  As my eyes returned to my grandfather in front of me I followed the line of his suit down towards his hands.

His hands had seen more than eighty years.  They were scared and worn.  They had built hope chests for each of his granddaughters upon their graduation from high school. My two younger sisters did not receive one because by the time they had graduated high school his hands were no longer able.  He had cut figures and frames.  He had built a coffee table with a glass top and sides and red velvet inside that held family heirlooms.  I remember sitting staring at it when I was young, wondering how things so old remain.  The coffee table was given to me about a year ago when I visited the last time. 

His hands had focused binoculars on birds in his backyard and had turned pages of his bird books that sat beside the binoculars to discover the origin of each creature that flew through his yard.  They had focused a camera on his wife and kids, his grandkids and his great-grandkids.  He built a contraption that would focus the camera on the pictures of his parents and grandparents.  He would send the copies of those who were long since gone to his kids and their families to keep the images from fading with time. 

His hands had cooked steaks wrapped in bacon on the back porch.  They had planted and trimmed the flowers around the yard each spring. It was those hands that placed his cake in milk each time he ate it, including his wedding and his fiftieth wedding anniversary.  They had written letters that were hardly legible and clapped in celebration at the telling of jokes.  Jokes not too coarse, but often to the distaste of my grandmother. 

They had cut countless wooden toys and had performed magic. He was the first one I can remember separating his own thumb - as he would slide his thumb covered by a finger away from the other with sound effects I would sit there entranced and amazed.  Placing his forefinger into his mouth, which he had filled with air like a blowfish, he would curl it and pop it out of his mouth with such a surprised look on his face it was as if it was the first time it had made such a noise.  We would try over and over to little avail and result with drool all about our hand and no noise anywhere in sight.  The whole ordeal would conclude with the plea of, 'one more time'.  And he would oblige.  I can now make such noises by popping my finger from my mouth.  I rarely do it.  When I do it brings a slight grin to my face and my wife’s as well. 

I had not been standing there more than a few minutes.  I glanced back at his face and said goodbye.  As I walked to my seat I said a prayer that was something of I hope he is smiling and glad to be home.  Then silently asking my friend from high school, who has been home for close to ten years now, to look out for him and show him around.

The idea that who Joseph Maynard Mackey Sr. was not truly among the silk of that silver box is not a complicated one.  My niece who is three stated Papa was in heaven and we were simply going to say goodbye to him.  I know that if you could get that body to breathe again or pump blood again it would not be my grandfather.  Yet the only grandfather that I have had, and will ever have, was lying in that silver box. 

The hands that lay among flowers and lights, music and tears, were his hands not simply a prop or stand in double.  Those hands with those scars had built and held a marriage together.  And held not only his life together but often his kids lives and his grandkids too.  It was not just a costume that he had worn for the last eighty years.  It was not the shell of a turtle that he had escaped from and now was free to live without the need for protection.  In as much as Joseph Maynard Mackey Sr. was not in that silver box, it was.  It was my father’s father that lay there with his hands next to his side.  I no longer have a Papa, and my father no longer has a Daddy. 

He had given meaning to each crease and wrinkle in those hands.  That is as much a miraculous concept as any other.  That more than blood and muscle had inhabited those hands.  He was not just an idea.  He had not existed merely in my imagination.  Rather he had existed in reality.  A reality that I had seen and touched.  Birdhouses and cedar chest, jokes and cakes would not have been a part of my memory if those hands had not.  And so much of that flesh is in that silver box.  And without that flesh I would not and could not have known him.

Who am I without these hands that type these keys?  My hands have done so little in comparison to his.  This flesh that covers me, these muscles and bones that lies underneath, is who I am.  I can not be separated from this flesh anymore than he could be from his.  Eventually I must ask what do I believe about this flesh and body.  I have more thoughts than evidence but my thoughts tell me that I will see the hands of my grandfather again someday.  That my own flesh and body will not be foreign to me when I awake in another time and place.  That the eternal does dwell in flesh and is among us.  That I will not have a problem finding my grandfather or high school friend.  I will know them.  In some ways it will be the first time that I will truly know them and the first time I will be truly known.