OK, cue the music. Can you hear that music in the background? The musical theme from “The Godfather” is playing in the back of my mind as I begin to write this.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks in our household. And, if ever there was someone that needs a good, healthy dose of humor, it’s my family and me. Now, what I am about to tell you is a 100% true story, delivered with a lot of love and humor. All this information is directed at my wife, whom we all now call “The Don,” in honor of Don Veto Corleone from the Godfather film. First, I should tell you that my wife is a warm, loving person who struggles to walk. She walks with a cane, slowly and steadily, but her mobility is severely hampered. Therefore, we tend to limit public appearances until she can have hip surgery done.
Anyway, The Other Day…, we went to a viewing at a local funeral parlor since a family member had passed. I cautiously got her inside the building and into a chair where she was accessible, but not causing any type of distraction. Me, what did I do? Well, I’m kind of like Eleanor Roosevelt used to be, I’m my wife’s legs. I walk around the room, and mingle with everyone. After a while, I go back and sit behind my wife. I didn’t sit beside her because she was busy talking. People kept coming over to her and talking to her. Some were long conversations, some were not. However, through it all, she was cool, calm, and collected.
In Michigan, where I grew up, men were the heads of the household, and they usually were in charge, directing people around and telling them what to do. In West Virginia, I soon learned that’s not the case. While my mother-in-law was alive, when she walked into a room, whether it was a wedding or a funeral, you knew who the head of her family was. People gravitated to her, paid their respects, and then moved on. Through the years, I have witnessed many families in WV where the women called the shots, and all was right with the world.
It wasn’t until we went home, and my son came downstairs, that I actually gave much thought to the idea that my wife C. was “in charge” of things at the viewing. After all, she was kind of captive, just sitting in her chair. However, that evening, my son looks at his mother and says, “I don’t know whether to call you Mom or ‘The Don’?” I had no clue what he was talking about, but my wife was smiling ear to ear. “Dad, you mean to say you didn’t see everyone was coming over to her to pay their respects?” I told him that was because she couldn’t move, and people were being polite. He looked at me (with a straight face) and said, “Dad, if she would have had a huge ring on her finger, the people there would have kissed it!”
While I sat there, I analyzed what my son had just said, and he was right. When my wife’s sisters came in, and our nieces and nephews visited, they all stopped by and were very respectful, polite, and generous with the amount of time they gave her. She was large and in charge. You see, with the passing of her mother, it seems her mom also passed the torch of family matriarch to my wife as well. I was smiling when I snapped back to reality, and my son was speaking again. “Well, Mom, or Don, my sister used to call you Moom (nickname), so if we combined them, we would get ‘Doom’. Which would you prefer I call you?” She came back with, “How about if I call you…”, I can’t repeat what she said, but, trust me, it was good! Then we all broke down and had a good, hearty laugh. Boy, did we need that! Losing a family member is difficult, and having a reason to laugh was just what we needed.
The next day we went to the funeral service. We went in, and I sat her down again. Then, as other attendees came through the door, guess where the first place they stopped was? Yep, you guessed it. So, I realized my son was right. People, once again, were paying their respects. I was fine with sitting there being totally ignored while my wife, the newly crowned “Don,” did her thing. When the funeral service was over, we then went to the burial site.
Once we arrived at the site, they had me drive my car all the way around to get her as close to the burial site as possible. They had a row of chairs set up for the mourners. Everyone asked my wife to sit, but she wouldn’t sit because it would be too difficult to get up again. So, to my surprise, no one else sat either. Afterward, my son points out, “If ‘The Don’ doesn’t sit, no one sits,” again making all the sense in the world to me, now that it had been pointed out to me the night before. She was “The Don,” or, as she was also referred to, “Mother Doom.” So, what do I call her? Oh, that’s an easy one, I just call her “The Boss.”
Hey, until next time, no matter what you are doing on this day, enjoy every minute you are still here with us. So says “The Don.” MUH!!
