From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(31)
As the widows of Via Gramsci ushered Zoela and me into Nonna’s home, I suddenly felt as though I had made a big mistake. Surrounded by a cluster of aging widows, I felt overwhelmed and suffocated, as though there might suddenly not be enough oxygen for myself or Zoela. I reached for my purse. In it I had enough Ativan for one pill a day for thirty days. I worried that that would not be enough.
The entrance of Nonna’s house was adorned with traditional hand-sewn lace curtains and shutters on a fading stone facade. You stepped through it and landed directly in the living room, straight from the street to the living quarters. Her home, like all the others on the street, had originally been an animal stall. It had been built more than a century ago to keep pigs, a mule, chickens, and barrels of olive oil. Families had slept on the wooden floorboards of a loft above their animals. By the time Nonna was married, electricity had arrived in town. By the time Saro was a child, there were running water, a semifinished bathroom, and ceramic floors to make it the home that I had come to know. The space had not been designed with transitions in mind. There is outside, and there is inside. The world of fields, sun, and wind and then, without fanfare, the world of home—a shelter without pretense, just function.
It was dark inside her home, not uncommon for a Sicilian house in summer. To push back against an antagonizing sun and elements of summer—winds that bring the sands of North Africa, a sun so intense it can dry clothes and make open-air tomato paste in an afternoon—the houses in town are shuttered closed during the day. The cooler air created by the combination of stone walls and low light was a relief. But also, the house seemed smaller, hollow, sad. It was emanating loss. The air was ripe with it.
A red candle with Saint Padre Pio painted on its glass burned on a lace centerpiece on the dining room table in the middle of the room. The dining table was now an altar.
Nonna placed the carry-on beside the table and instructed me to take the ashes from the bag. I did so. They were in a special travel box directly from the funeral home in Los Angeles. The box was adorned with a blue silk case that buttoned around it like an envelope. She put Saro’s remains on the table next to the candle. The light in the room seemed to grow dimmer as more people arrived, crowding the room and blocking the light entering from the open door. For the first time, I noticed that the couch and chairs had been pushed to the perimeter of the room. They were assembled to encircle the table, which was also not in its usual place. Nonna took a seat closest to the table, closest to Saro. She told me to sit next to her. Zoela folded into my lap. I heard someone at the periphery of the room on a cell phone: “Chiama il prete. è l’ora.—Tell the priest it’s time.”
For the next thirty minutes, the room filled with more people, some staying briefly, others settling in. The most elderly sat in chairs, while the youngest stood on their feet. The doors remained open, with only the lace to protect us from the world beyond our collective grief. I had never witnessed a Sicilian wake. I had only heard about them from Saro. He explained how the dead were laid out in the living room of the home. Saro’s cousin Giacchino is the town carpenter and also its coffin maker. The storage unit he uses to store some ten to twelve coffins at a time is next door to Nonna’s house. She is often the first in town to know that someone local has died, which is anytime she hears Giacchino open the unit with a skeleton key. He retrieves a coffin and then takes it to the grieving family. The body is placed inside by relatives, and the mourning ritual begins. In the old days, it often lasted all night. At daybreak, the body is carried to the town church for a Mass and then borne through the streets to the cemetery at the edge of town. People emerge in their doorways to watch the funeral procession go by.
As I sat there, I began to realize that not only was I witnessing a Sicilian wake, I was very much in the center of it. Sure, I knew we’d be taking Saro’s ashes to the cemetery the next day. But I’d had no way of knowing that so many neighbors and next of kin would descend on Nonna’s living room to pay respects, say a prayer, offer condolences to Saro’s child and me, his new widow, right away. I had assumed that after a day of international travel, I’d arrive at my mother-in-law’s house and be able to rest. I’d sit alone with her. We’d eat, we cry, we’d talk as we had done before. But now a son and husband was dead. Nothing was normal.
Amid all of this, my mother-in-law sat saying the rosary, audible only to herself. And she rocked. Other women, old and young, did the same. They were in a chorus of prayer. More people came in and kissed her on both cheeks. They offered her condolences. She didn’t rise. She didn’t look up. She never stopped praying. None of them did. Not her cousins, not my sister-in-law, Franca, not the widows and wives of Via Gramsci.
Within a half hour the priest arrived. He, too, began to pray. His prayers meant that the official lament had begun. The wailing, the tears, it all formed a shrill and guttural song of loss that seemed to reach back to the ancient world. Zoela rocked on my lap, half asleep, half aware. My body shook gently. I cried new tears, tears I had never cried in L.A. Tears that could find me only in Sicily. And as the intensity of the lament became almost trancelike, a callout to all the losses of all time, I wanted to fall over. I wanted to lie on the floor. I wanted to howl at the top of my lungs. I wanted to run mad through the street. My husband was dead.
Instead I sat there jet-lagged, holding Zoela and unsure how this mourning ritual worked. Saro and I had never attended a funeral in Sicily. Weddings, yes. Funerals, no. I began to watch the box of ashes on the table closely, as if this had all been a mistake. He couldn’t be dead in two places, two realities. My mind told me he might walk down the stairs of his mother’s house at any moment, see the scene, and tell me how young Sicilian widows behave. He’d tell me the protocol. In another imagining, he’d come down and ask, “What’s all this? Put up your tears. I’m right here.” We’d smile and head out for a long walk in the countryside. He’d show me the mulberries in season. But none of that happened.