I’m gladly saying adios to the most tumultuous year I have ever endured from a personal standpoint. I stand ready to welcome the new year and resolve to show more resolve in everything I do. How about you?

There are a breed of people who for some reason or another have trouble rousing themselves from slumber in the morning. No matter how early they try and get to sleep or how many alarms they set, they find a way to slip up. I am one of those people, and this morning it almost cost me my chance to pay my last respects to my grandfather.

Services were to begin at 8:30 am in Keyport, a 45 minute drive from where I live. Mass was to follow starting at 9:15. I arose from slumber sometime around 9:30. A steady stream of profanities and an overwhelming sense of dread hung over me, but I managed to pull together enough brains cells to figure out my remaining courses of action.

I called the funeral home, getting details on when the procession would be arriving at the cemetery and direction on how to get there. I figured it was the only chance I had left. I hung up the phone, threw on my monkey suit and raced out the door as quickly as I could.

Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on heaven’s door” and the Queen / David Bowie co-effort “Under Pressure” greeted me on the radio as I raced to try and catch up with my family at the cemetery. Never let it be said that god doesn’t have a sense of irony.

My trip on the Parkway was smooth enough, but once I hit the back roads it seemed like every slow driver in New Jersey was in front of me. I was against the clock at every twist and turn, heading through parts of Monmouth county I had never seen before all in an attempt to meet up with my family at the cemetery.

Thankfully I got very concise directions from the funeral home director over the phone, and by the grace of the man upstairs I made it in time to say my last goodbyes under haze covered skies. Better late than never I suppose. I arrived in the closing minutes of the service, just in time to say an “Our Father”, a “Hail Mary” and place a rose on Pop-Pop’s casket.

While not the way I had envisioned things going, I still was able to beat the clock and not miss my chance, though “better late than never” seems to be a personal motto of mine….

The drive up to Keyport was smooth enough, and I had little trouble finding the funeral home. I stepped out of my car, adjusted my tie and made my way toward the front door, noting the coming clouds and the slight chill in the air. So began my night at my grandfather’s wake.

Seeing Pop-Pop lying there was certainly a shock to my system, but he carried an air of peace about him; a sense that he finally found tranquility. The viewing room was filled to the brim with family and friends paying respect; the air thick with the sounds of conversation and memories, greetings and laughter from shared stories. While a sense of loss did indeed exist, it didn’t feel nearly as heavy as I experienced at my mom’s wake some three years ago. That was a mourning for a life cut short. This was a celebration of a long life lived — a tribute to his 89 years.

Of course I’m involved with this tale, so this wasn’t just an average wake. Let me explain: Pop-Pop was my father’s father, and my ties to that side of my heritage had been non-existent for a while because of a long period of turbulence in my relationship with my dad during my evolution from child to man (also known as my teenage years), going months on end without so much as a phone call between us. And by extension, this isolated me from the rest of the family. The last time I saw most of the extended Fischler clan was 12 years ago.

Hell of a time and place to re-introduce yourself, huh?

I was expecting to feel somewhat out of sorts, considering the deluge of faces and names I’d be hit with, but I wasn’t quite ready for what I experienced. For a few brief minutes I felt like I was suffering from the world’s mildest anxiety attack (which is still above regular discomfort and nervousness in my book). I also felt something that I’ve never experienced outside of the confines of a bar after about 6 drinks: the urge to smoke a cigarette. Not just a psychological need, but an actual physical need for one. Now that’s something I thought I’d never say.

As the night wore on, I made the rounds re-introducing this shaggy-haired stranger to older versions of familiar faces, with little in the way of small talk simply due to lack of context (long periods of separation will rob you of that, y’know), save for run-in with my cousin Pete. He and I did manage to see each other once between my exile in the strangest of situations, of which we compared notes (Aside: glad to see everything on the up and up on that front).

For most of the night I stayed relatively quiet and relatively close to my father, just like when I was an 8 year old, in part for my own sanity and security but not solely for that reason. I was there as much for my father, to give him my support if only by just giving him my presence. It was really all I could manage at that point, and it seemed to be enough.

In the past week, I’ve found more out about myself and my father’s the side of my family than I ever knew: from little things like who I got my wavy hair from (Answer: both my mom and dad seem to have passed along their hair genes to me), to the fact my grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge (hence the folded American flag in his casket), to the fact that my great-grandfather had worked as a machinist and unknowingly helped in The Manhattan Project (talk about a bombshell out of left field).

It’s quite a lot of thoughts and emotions that I’m still trying to process and digest, and I’m glad to be learning about the stock from which I came, but I’m just sorry it had to all be sparked by the loss of Pop-Pop. But some good comes from all experiences. Just maybe the good that comes out of his passing will be the tightening of our the family bonds I’ve long neglected.

As I pulled out of the parking lot and pointed my car southward once more, the sky opened, turning the drizzle into a torrent of rain that helped to wash the streets and soothe the earth. I’d like to think that the sky was crying tears of sorrowful joy, but then again I’ve always been just a dreamer….

I just found out my grandfather passed away this morning. “Pop-pop” had been in the hospital for a while but things looked like they were getting better. Regretably, I never got to spend much time with him once my teenage years set in, so most of my fondest memories of him are from my childhood. But today the Fischler clan is less one patriarch.