Family Tradition

How’d you get in this position?

Mike died in June of some medical complication or another on the drive back from Nebraska. He attended his youngest granddaughter’s college graduation, smiled and laughed his way through the ceremony, and threw in the towel right after. We all wondered if he had just been waiting for it. If he hadn’t wanted to spoil Catlin’s day.

Mike was the last of his siblings, so the whole family turned up, as was typical when one of the Willards died. When my grandfather died, we took over a hotel and drank the whole town dry. We don’t like our feelings in my family, so we party them away. A cop car had parked across the street just to keep an eye on our grieving.

We buried Mike in a side of the road cemetery outside of Winterset, Iowa, and two hundred people parked on the street and trekked in suits and dresses to pay respects. Catlin read a poem. I held my mother’s hand and bowed my head, squeezing extra hard every time somebody sobbed. A cousin carved a beautiful wooden box for the ashes, which were buried following a gun salute. He was a military man, after all. Even the old men who looked like Willie Nelson cried. Mike was a light like that. He filled a room, and things felt empty now. Quieter.

The reception was held at a VA in Winterset, which had a thin bar, some catered ziti, and a max occupancy of a hundred people. I felt suffocated in there with the wall to wall people, so I spent the time leaning against the outside wall of the VA, the perfect spot to observe the chaos. There was an empty lot next door and a bar across the street. Naturally we spilled over. After we drank out the bar, the VA, and the keg in the back of Aunt Rebecca’s truck, about fifty of us made our way to Dan’s. There were coolers of stuff to drink there, and he had burgers. I couldn’t remember if I had eaten breakfast. The whole day tasted of salt.

I have loved Jim Beam

At 14 the most alcohol I’d ever had was a glass of champagne at my cousin’s wedding, and a sip of a Blue Moon beer in a Nashville bar, and I had spit both back into the glass. I was by no means a drinker, but I was by all means a sampler. So when relatives discovered I was essentially a virgin in the ways of liquor, everything was shoved at me. “Try a sip of this,” “Have a taste,” “What do you mean you’ve never had Jack before?” “It tastes like apple pie.” My mother mixed whiskey with my Arnold Palmer and passed me a shot. Jenna cracked open three flavors of Angry Orchard and insisted I sample them all. I was handed the bottle of apple whiskey Dan had mixed cinnamon sticks in and microwaved, and I took a swig straight from the bottle. It felt good to try it all, to be included. Drinking was a rite of passage around here, and I felt like I was doing something right by sipping. At some point it all stopped burning and my cheeks got warm. He was right. Just like a summer apple pie. So when Betty took a bottle of whiskey out of her car, where it had baked all day in the August sun, and demanded we all do shots, I accepted my share. It made the feelings less strong. The non-drinkers had left hours ago.

Why do you drink?

Jenna raised her beer bottle to the sky and yelled “TO GET DRUNK!” She was drinking a rosé Angry Orchard, her own personal supply from her own cooler on the deck. The green apple was her favorite. Our cousin Ted, two years my senior, sat next to her and cracked one open.

“That my Angry Orchard?” She demanded.

“Yeah,” Ted said, in that I don’t give a shit tone. Some cousins are more likable than others. Jenna was one I liked. I liked how she worked hard, how she didn’t take shit. I liked the dreamcatcher tattoo that ran down her leg. I didn’t like Ted. He didn’t have a brain in his head, and he wasn’t filling the gaps with respect either. His presence immediately soured the mood.

Jenna passed me her bottle, which I promptly took a sip of. She plucked the full green apple from Ted and chugged it in one go as we watched. She slapped the empty bottle back in his hand and took the rosé back from me. “Don’t ever touch my beer,” she ordered.

Ted gaped, half enraged. He stormed off, muttering.

I stared at Jenna in awe, trying to memorize the move so I could be more like her.

Why do you roll smoke?

I sat on the edge of the deck, hazy from the late hour and the build up of all of my sips. At 14 with no tolerance, the mix of liquors and beer was starting to hit, and my body felt fuzzy and soft, like a warm dandelion. The air smelt like bubblegum, coming from my cousin Keith’s vape as he sat beside me. The wind blew the vapors my way.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, drunker than me. He’d been going beer for beer with my brother all night. They were running out of things to drink. “I’m blowing all my smoke in your face.”

“I didn’t notice,” I said honestly, trying to focus on the warm pit in my stomach, on the togetherness. I moved to sit on his other side as Jenna answered the song again.

“TO GET STONED!”

Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?

Somewhere past the philosopher stage of his drunkenness, Will put on Hank Williams Jr. because, he said, it was Mike’s favorite singer. He put on a tune I was unfamiliar with. I don’t listen to a lot of country. It was called Family Tradition, and Will marched his way around the fire pit, stomping and singing along at full volume. He was off-key, horribly, but he was slurring all the words right, and it made me smile. I don’t know what it is about drunkards that never miss a lyric. He was just drawing our every word. “WHHHYYY MUUUST YOU LIVE! OUT. THE SOONNNNGGGGS THAT. YOU. WROTE.”

Jenna answered it with a laugh. “TO GET LAID!”

The party roared with laughter. Will dropped into a chair as my mother started to dance, and I watched the fire pit illuminate with the glow. We didn’t call this a funeral; we called it a celebration of life. The sun set on the sadness hours ago.

I’m just carrying on an old family tradition

At some hour I’ll never be sure of, Mom dragged me to a camper in the yard so I could go to sleep.

“I’m not tired,” I told her truthfully. The party was still not winding down. I swore I could see the sun starting up. I was willing to protest. I didn’t need sleep– I needed a few more hours of lazy drunk hugs, of bonding with the relatives I only saw once or twice a year, of feeling like I belonged. Wasn’t somebody starting up poker? I was great at that game, deal me in.

“Too bad,” Mom said, and she shut the door behind her. I stayed up in the camper bunk beds, staring at the bunk spinning above me until my brother strolled in and dropped into the other bunk. Then the party felt over. Then I could rest.

When I woke up, Uncle Will was in the bunk above me, and some cousins had snagged the bunk bed beside me. I stumbled out of the camper, wincing at the sunlight in the yard. My head felt like a ton of bricks, like someone poured thick mold over my bones. The back porch was lined with beer bottles, glittering with morning dew. I trudged into the kitchen just as Dan set a stack of pizzas on the stove.

“Casey’s Breakfast Pizza,” he said groggily. “Best hangover cure there is.”

I took a bite and my soul gave itself over to grease and bacon. Truly, the stuff of gods. My brother climbed up from the basement. He wandered in to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, he explained. Somehow it all got turned around and he ended up sleeping on the couch. Rich passed out in the bathtub. Keith slept right on the stairs. You know it’s a good party when you just drop where you’re standing.

We head out hungover later that day, and I stretch my neck out looking back at Dan’s as we drive away. I’m not sure when I’ll see any of them again. Catlin will go back to Nebraska, Rich to California, us to Connecticut. Leaving always feels heavy, the weight worse when your stomach is still pumped full of whiskey.

“Do they always party like that at funerals?” I asked.

“Of course,” Mom said. “It’s tradition.”