by Melinda Regnell

Created on: March 09, 2009

MASS FOR THE DEAD: A Prologue

Like moss growing up through the scattered bones of long-dead corpses, the fact of my father's death silently settled over me. My overriding reaction was "Thank God." No more embarrassments, no more inappropriate outbursts over dinner, no more bullying, no more lies from my Mother a blessed end to the social incontinence by which this man, once the heroic measure by which I judged all men, had come to be known. I clung to that reaction like a drowning sailor to a broken mast. Years passed as years have a way of doing. I busied myself with graduate school, my son, community theatre. I turned forty. I directed musicals. I wrote a play. I penned essays. I dyed my hair raspberry. I took lovers. And still the question I refused to ask myself waited silent and undemanding, an ever-present almost itch.

In 1990, along with purple crocus that lined my walkway and peepers that sang another Spring into being, my cousin Cynthia returned to Maine from North Carolina. She was getting married "This time for love!", she assured us. She brought us pecans in little woven grass baskets and accosted our stoic New England ears with a newly-acquired Southern-Belle accent. And just for mother and me, she brought a surprise a video tape of her father's old home movies.

"They do it all the time," she told me as I slid the cartridge into the VCR, "they just take the old films and put them on tape. Wait till you see them!" She was vibrating in anticipation of our delight. My finger hovered over the PLAY button. "Wait! Don't start it yet. Let's
cook popcorn...for the movies!" and off she went into the kitchen to make popcorn and melt butter. I hate popcorn. That fact had no impact on the bustle in the kitchen as pots were oiled and yellow kernels were poured into them to be placed over a low flame. They rattled like buck shot in a pail as she jiggled it over the heat. I resigned myself to popcorn in the same way I had resigned myself to my cousin of 42 years in silence. Soon, puffy little white blossoms of popped corn were dumped into a large aluminum bowl, salted, buttered and presented for mandatory consumption. We settled into our separate chairs and spent a balmy Spring evening watching silent black and white film clips from our childhood.

~~~~~~~~~

There we were, the three older cousins Cindy, Penny and I parading across gray-tone grass in bathing suits and towels, posturing for Uncle Phil as we loaded inner tubes and parasols into the car for a day at the

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