Chapter 1

BEFORE THE WAKE

AUGUST, 1987: DEPRESSINGLY GREY, MISERABLY wet, and unspeakably sad. My six siblings and I, with our families in tow, scurry up the steps of Kristan Funeral Home in Mundelein, Illinois. It is lashing rain. My sister, Sheila, and I made all of the arrangements two days before. Pete Kristan, the funeral director's son hurries to greet us in the darkened lobby. Our families know each other informally, having grown up in the same small, mid-western town, attending the same church and the same schools. We have siblings around the same ages. Sheila and Pete were grade school classmates at Santa Maria del Popolo. Pete takes the time to express his condolences to each member of the family as we shake off the rain and crowd into the narrow foyer. We had been through this routine with Pete's father, Albert Kristan four years earlier, when Mother passed away. But the heir apparent to the family's modest mortuary business takes a personal interest in the arrangements this time, going well out of his way to accommodate us. Pete turns his lanky frame and pushes open the double doors at the rear of the chapel. We file in silently. There are several floral arrangements flanking the bronze candelabras on either side of the coffin at the opposite end of the salon. I count them. Twenty-seven. About one hundred folding chairs are meticulously aligned down the center of the room. It's not going to be enough, I say to myself. Along the walls are heavily draped windows, several sofas, tables, and upholstered chairs. The wake won't be open to visitors for another hour. This is the family's time to grieve. No one talks.

We sit and weep over the loss of our family patriarch and the realization that now we are orphans reaches critical mass.

Several minutes pass before I muster enough courage to approach his casket. I fight the unbearable sadness which I know might suddenly and violently overtake me at the sight of my father's lifeless body. I kneel down in front of him.

I brush my fingers lightly along the sleeve of his sport coat-a roughhewn tweed of blue and grey. I recall how I encouraged him to purchase the jacket in McGee's on the Diamond in Donegal, Ireland, when he, Sheila, and I were on our way to Arranmore Island two summers before. It would be his last visit home to his native land. His crisp white shirt stands in bold contrast to the complementary blue and grey wool necktie that I bought for him in a little shop in the town of Gweedore (ge 'door) during that same visit. The Windsor knot is perfect. Pete made sure of it. Although decades apart in age, Pete and Dad were friends and shared a mutual admiration and respect for each other over quiet conversations and countless pints at the quaint lake-side tavern south of town, known as The Irish Mill.

"So," I whisper in resignation, "it has come down to this, has it?"

I am, for better or worse, very much like my father-both in personality and physical appearance. I'd like to think that I inherited only his finest qualities; in truth, I believe I possess in equal parts the best of his virtues and the worst of his faults. He is-or was by those who knew him best-a good and a decent man. He had a difficult early life and fought hard to earn every scrap of respect that he gained through sheer determination and with practically no formal education. His mother died when he was six. He first left home at age twelve to work in the misty fields of Scotland and fled his despot father and the hard-scrabble existence of his tiny island home in Ireland for good when he was seventeen, forging his birth certificate and enlisting in the British Navy on the eve of the Second World War. Eventually, he made his way to America, where he met and married my mother, became a US citizen, raised a family, worked hard, and drank hard. He struggled for a lifetime in the dingy, rusting factories of American capitalists in order to provide for his family as best he could. And he instilled in me an abiding love for my family heritage, history, and music. He was my good friend. He had precious little time to enjoy the fruits of his labor and he leaves this world too soon-but he leaves it a better place than when he entered and when all is said and done, you can't ask any more of a man than that. And now, here we are. I admire with profound sadness how handsome he looks. My every tear carries with it its own special memory. I know well the lines on his face and the stories they tell . . .