The Family Calendar

The Family Calendar Jim Daniels For the past six years, my wife Kristin and I have made a calendar for my family choosing photographs from a selection sent in by my brothers and sister, my parents, and by Elaine, my father's cousin. We mark birthdays, anniversaries, special family events, and select the appropriate icons—balloons , birthday cakes, champagne glasses. Elaine, an only chüd with an only chüd, had few relatives, so we drew her into our famüy We celebrated her birthday—March 18. On Christmas Eve, she died of stomach cancer. We had known she was going—she knew, too. In early December, as we put the calendar together, we faced a dilemma: where to put Elaine? In six years ofcalendars, we hadn't lost anybody yet. Each year had brought just happy additions, most recendy our daughter, RosaUe. Now, we had to mark something else, a different kind of event for which we had no icon. Elaine was the first to send her pictures in—they arrived in August, long before we'd even thought about the next calendar. She was receiving chemotherapy, coping with nausea and weakness and fear. She sent a number of old Christmas photos, along with one recent picture of her in a luxurious dress she wore to a benefit baU at Somerset MaU—the fanciest maU in metro Detroit. A friend of hers had bought her a ticket, knowing how much Elaine liked to dress up. Knowing she was dying. For a while, it didn 't look Uke she'd be healthy enough to even go to the baU, but she lasted until midnight. She stands alone in the photo, as she had much of her life. Along with the pictures, she'd sent a note: "AU my hair's fallen out, so I'm an old baldy now, but I've got a fancy wig!!" Two exclamation points. That was how Elaine lived, when everyone else was using question marks, eUipses. She didn't have many famüy photos 96 Jim Daniels97 because for years it was just her and BiU, her son. She raised him by herself in the projects in Detroit. Her husband had abandoned them both. The first real grief I ever saw was BiU's. He occasionally spent the weekend with us to give his mother a break. He was years older than me and my brothers and sister, and we aU admired him as a huge, invincible force. He's always been big—taU and husky—like his mother. But one Saturday morning , I came out of our bedroom to find him in my father's arms as he bawled, pure weeping, over the family he didn't have. In October, Elaine asked me if I knew of any good Catholic cemeteries. My only experience with cemeteries had been as an altar boy thirty years ago. I told her about riding with the priests in the limo with E. J. Mandziuk, the funeral director—his stinky cigars, how they nauseated me. How afterwards , the priests usually slipped us some money. We used to get out of school, too. We went to eitherWhite Chapel or the one out by city airport. They both had a lot of green grass—weU maintained. I wanted to keep our conversation on the surface, moving—as far from the black earth under that impossibly green grass as I could. I went on and on, and she just let me. FinaUy, I just shrugged. She shrugged back and laughed, like she always did. What makes a good cemetery anyway? Neither of us knew. Where to put Elaine, when we knew she wouldn't live out the year? Kristin suggested putting her on the cover. The cover had so far been reserved for the grandchildren, and enough new ones had come along to make that an easy choice. But we were done with that now. RosaUe would be the last grandchild. "That's pretty maudlin, don't you think?" I said. Here, Elaine, you're dying, so you get to be on the cover. "But ifwe put her inside, won't it just make everybody sad, having to see her picture...