The Judge Report

Aurora Montenaro’s funeral today brought back memories, and visiting afterwards with her kids and grandkids and great-grandson and other assorted relatives and friends brought back many more, and I remembered a story I had started to write a long, long time ago and found it, happily transposed and saved through several generations of computers in still-readable format.

It is the story of the wake of Big Pete Montenaro back in the spring of 1995, I think.  Mom seemed perfectly healthy at the time, though she died herself about six months later.

***********

The line at the funeral parlor ran out the door, flowers everywhere. This was, after all, Big Pete’s last farewell and everyone wanted to say goodbye to the gregarious, hardworking, hard-playing, sweet, loveable father of seven rough and tumble kids who were themselves now settling into ever-deepening middle-age.

Aurora and the kids and spouses lined up around the room.  Family pictures, railroad memorabilia and Notre Dame paraphernalia were everywhere.  We had something to say to them all, the usual mutterings, of course, but also a few lively exchanges, funny anecdotes, happy memories.  For me, they were like an extended family, having grown up with the kids, worked for and with them selling snowcones through college, later their occasional legal counselor, always a friend.

Then there were Peter and Mary Alice, classmates and somewhat more than friends, subjects of numerous entries in my teen-age diary, high school sweethearts and parents of three.  They had left town long ago, and though we saw each other occasionally, their kids had managed to suddenly grow up without my ever getting to know them. It happens fast, I’ve noticed.

Mary Alice had that soft, gentle glow as usual. She and Pete greeted Mom and Mary warmly and me not too badly either. By and by we made our way to the back of the room and took some seats and visited with some of the other mourners.  Looking around I spotted three kids in the second row.

“Must be Pete’s,” I said to no one in particular.  I decided to casually sidle up there, aiming to eventually engage them in conversation and tell them some rollicking good tales about what their parents did at their age.  Eventually I took a chair in front of them and ignored them, noticeably.

The oldest, Maria, touched my sleeve.  “You must be Bob Going,” she said. “My father said you’d probably come over and try to tell us some stories.”

I was shocked, I don’t mind telling you, that Pete would ever suspect, let alone convey such a thing. So I pretty much saved the stories for another time, lest he should be proven right. 

Maria had her mother’s looks and charms and her father’s spunk, not a bad combination, and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes, as could be said of her younger sister Gina as well.

The next day, after the funeral, I went up to the farm and spent some time with them.

“Maria wants to hear your stories,” Pete informed me.

“Any restrictions?” I asked.

“None whatsoever.”

Phew. Now there’s a brave and trusting lad.

I decided to wait on it some more, and promised Maria a letter.

It was a good feeling hanging out with them.  I felt like I had accomplished something, that my presence had helped lighten the load of their loss for at least a little while.  I was rather proud of the way I had handled the whole day, and the maturity I had exhibited.

“So what did you do up there?” Mary asked later at dinner.

I smiled.  “I did, I think, what I do best.”

“You read their paper?” asked Bobby.
“You slept on their couch?” asked Anna.
“You sat on their toilet?” asked Jamie.

********

Dear Maria,

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I take as my theme the words of Mr. Charles Dickens, for it was his A Tale of Two Cities that our sophomore class was reading when the great race for the hand of Mary Alice Mezzio really began . . .

And so I continued, ultimately telling my version of her parents’ love story, including maximizing my part in bringing them together. I cast myself in the role of Sydney Carton, of course.  Noble self-sacrifice and all that.

Anyway, I concluded the whole thing by asking her to read it aloud to her parents, and  to watch for their reactions, especially  to notice their middle-aged parent eyes suddenly  looking young again.

I was delighted when she wrote back and informed me that all had gone according to plan, and that she had caught them each wiping a tear.

*******

The careful reader will observe that in this unfinished excerpt I never really got around to talking about Big Pete Montenaro, the subject of the story and the object of the funeral.  Before too many more decades pass, I hope to make up for that deficiency.

I’m not sure when I first met Aurora Montenaro.  I think it was in eighth or ninth grade when her son Pete was recuperating from a knee injury in St. Mary’s hospital and a bunch of us went down there to create havoc with him.

Peter often proved a challenge to the educational establishment.  Our Bishop Scully High School Principal Father Anselment has said, “Peter and I occasionally had diffferences of opinion on the administration of the school.”

Oddly enough Sister Maria Christina discovered a similar pattern in her English class.  Once she attempted to settle some disruption issues by spacing Pete and Mark Olbrych and myself as far apart as was physically possible. 

She failed miserably.  I leave it to my biographers to dig up the details. (Peter, naturally. went on to become a school psychologist).

Pete and I had more than a few things in common, and one of them included his future wife, Mary Alice Mezzio.  All three of us had mothers giving birth while we were in high school, all in their forties.  Sean and Stephen came within days of each other in May and Aurora brought forth Anthony the same October.

After high school I went to work for the Montenaros as Snow Cone Bob, and worked alongside Snow Cone Pete, Snow Cone Frank (Romeo) and Snow Cone Mr. Harrington the Mailman.

And I got to know Aurora.

Taken as a group the Montenaros were the hardest-working family I have ever met. They would have made great pioneers.  None of them worked harder, and with more cheer, than Aurora.

She was simply a wonderful woman. Selfless, caring, devout, long-suffering (she had five rambunctious boys before producing Marilyn, who frankly could hold her own with her brothers as far as I could tell), and in endless motion, whether working in the big kitchen making sandwiches for the food truck, or mixing the snow cone syrup, or cashing us in at the end of the day, or teaching Marilyn to use an iron, or just trying to figure out where everyone was.

Once, early in my second season, I had a difference of opinion about the administration of the snow cone business when Jimmy Dick, who couldn’t drive, got to milk the city swimming pool traffic by himself instead of sharing  it with the rest of us.  I tendered my resignation.

Aurora came to me with tears in her eyes and begged me to stay. 

Aw, shucks.  I stayed.  And my commission on those fifteen cent snow cones paid my way through college.

I always felt right at home at the Big M farm.  Aurora made everyone feel that way.

Years and years later I performed weddings for a couple of the kids.  After the last one Aurora came up to me and said, “Bob, what do we owe you?”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “You’re family!”

And then the tears came again.

As they did for me this week when I picked up the paper and learned that she had died. 

There’s probably no grief worse than losing a mother, but losing your friend’s mother can come pretty close, especially when it’s someone who did so much for so many for so long, who loved so well, and who left the world so very much better than she found it.