Irony

I love irony.

For example, if you look up the word "catholic" in the dictionary, you’ll get "universal" and "all-inclusive" as definitions, which might lead one to think Mr. Webster insane. I mean get serious. Maybe there is a difference between "catholic" and "Catholic" like you have to do something to earn the capital letter. I still think it’s a fucking good joke.

Nick’s mother, Joan, is Catholic. Joan made a point of telling me once that she "raised a Catholic" son. I’m inclined to agree with her based on Mr. Webster’s definition. I wonder if the Pope has ever read Webster’s?

Joan, of course, insisted on a formal Catholic funeral. Nick’s brother, Joey, his father, Ted, and four other guys I have never seen before in my life where his pall bearers. I think they were cousins or something, but you can bet your ass if I’ve never met them, Nicky didn’t want them carrying his goddamn coffin.

Actually, he didn’t want a coffin at all. He wanted to be cremated. He wanted his ashes scattered off the top of the Empire State Building. That’s what he told me. I sort of stared at him. 'I’m serious, baby.' He'd managed to croak at me in those final days. For what it’s worth, I did tried to tell Joan, but she told me it was 'just another one of his fantasies'. Sort of what she thought of me too, I guess; another one of his fantasies. Only I know that I was one fantasy that came true, over and over, night after night, even if she chooses not to believe it. If she had been there for his last breaths she’d have heard him for herself.

And she would have also heard him tell me he loved me.

His service was in the big Cathedral where the priest gave a rousing sermon about how we are all sinners and the crowd fell to its knees, groveling for forgiveness. Then Nick was loaded into a big black car and driven out to the graveyard. Whatever happened there I don’t know. I don’t know because I was forbidden to attend the burial. All of Nick’s local friends were. 'You people will let us bury him in peace.' She’d said. In peace. What a fucking joke. So, instead, we 'people' took a trip to the Empire State Building and I tossed a cookie tin full of our collective cigarette ashes into the wind for him. Damn near got arrested for it. Nick would have had a good laugh at me, he enjoyed irony too.

If Catholicism really stood for what Mr. Webster claims it does, we'd see the whole world at its knees praying for peace, and on its feet celebrating our differences. If it really was all-inclusive, I’d have been at Nicky’s burial. I ought to have been there.