Frankie's RI wake

I'm taking Bern to the train in New Haven tomorrow. She's driving down to West Virginia with Josh and Cathy and the three granddaughters on Sunday. They're going to Uncle Frankie's funeral.

I couldn't go because I have to present Mike Carroll for ordination on Saturday and do church in Killingworth on Sunday. So I went, yesterday, to Frankie's Rhode Island wake.

Tony, who has lived with Frankie for 8 years and taken care of him, and Fran are his son and daughter. Son Frankie, Jr. lives in Virginia and will be at the funeral. Dan, my brother in law, is a RC priest and will do the funeral mass.

The wake in RI was wondrous. Frances had done a photo/music collage on her laptop and it was playing with a Harlem choir singing. Funeral homes will do this for you for a price, but Fran, God love her, put it together, she told me, in an hour or so.

Fifty or sixty people came all told, Fran and Tony's friends and friends Frank had made in RI. Two of his doctors and two of his dialysis technicians were there. Physicians and medical folks don't, in my long experience, come to wakes. A wake means they've failed. But there they were, tears in their eyes.

That is what Frankie was like.

There were also neighbors from RI--and elderly woman and two guys that looked like bikers among them. That was Frank's magic, he had no 'judgement' about him. He met you as you were and honored you for that.

Fran and Tony had asked me to say a few words and pray a prayer. I told the people there how Frank and Annie had welcomed me 49 years ago (a WASP dating their Italian/Hungarian niece) with no question. Frank and Anthony had come to church where I was presiding and Tony said, interrupting me as I spoke, "we committed a mortal sin coming to mass at your church!" I said, "I think God will get over it," in reply.

Then Cindy spoke. She's Fran's partner/wife. And she talked about how Frank and Annie hadn't blinked when she came into their lives. She said Frank accepted her as a daughter and she gained a second father.

That's the way he was. Just like that. No judgment, no evaluation, no assumptions. If his daughter loved Cindy, so did he.

Then Tony and Fran spoke. They are both devastated by their father's death. Tony especially. He not only lost a father, he lost his companion for the last 8 years.

I realize it might be hard to imagine Frankie was really so open, accepting, hospitable as he was.

And he was. No kidding. One of the best people I've ever know. And it was humbling and profoundly good to have shared some of the journey we're all on with him.

His funeral is on Monday. Drink a glass of good Italian wine to his memory. Nothing would please him more....