Some three-plus weeks ago, I attended a memorial service in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The complete story can be found here and here.
The untimely and unnatural death of Mary Dean Buckley was remembered by friends and family in the town of Rumson.
I knew Mary. She was the sister of a fellow I dated back in the early-mid 1980s (that is a whole other story). I did not know her well, but I recall clearly that she was real and true, loving, present, self-effacing, and I expect, a very good person. I'm sure she had her foibles, tics that her family forebore and forgave. I didn't know her well enough to see any of them. She should not have died. She was forty-seven, and she left behind a husband and four sons.
Her funeral was held last November.
The follow-up service was held on a cold, gray weekday, in a white, clapboard Catholic church, situated just across the Navesink River from the barrier spit of land called Sea Bright. I arrived after the service had begun, and took a seat in one of the rear-most rows.
I was oddly relieved that after so many years, I have forgotten whole chunks of the Catholic mass. I sat and watched the faithful.
I surveyed the backs of heads, trying to identify people that I am sure I had not seen in twenty years. I recognized Mary's husband, Matt, his thick head of hair still thick and full, but now completely silver.
Other faces felt familiar, and I caught the eye of some, but further recognition failed. When the service ended, everyone filed out, paying respects to the family. I spotted Mary's parents, both of whom I knew. And I waited until everyone filed out before me.
When Mary's mother held out her hand, and I said, "It's Holly. Holly Hodder," she exclaimed and hugged me.
Times like those strip away the years, and I am a young woman all over again, wanting so much to make a good impression.
In the next second, however, I returned to the present, to the person I am, to the person I like being, and I am happy just to offer condolence, physical touch, a smile, and a memory.
Mary's parents hosted a luncheon at their home, and I made a wrong turn or two, as I drove the three or so miles further inland from the ocean. The high school from which I graduated is probably not more than two miles further, and would, no doubt, result in at least one more wrong turn, if I had been motivated to find it. I was not.
I reintroduced myself, or was reintroduced to people I had not seen in the intervening twenty years. In short order, I discovered that I had not seen these people since the actual day that Mary and Matt were married - their wedding day, in the summer of 1985.
I stood in the family dining room when something hit me. Mary and Matt's wedding day was memorable to me, more for the day afterward. Mary's brother and I were broken up by then, only a few weeks earlier, and I was still in pain. I was fragile.
(Funny, I still devolve into a state of fragility after heartbreak, but now I know that it doesn't last quite so long, and I manage to survive, in spite of myself, time after time.)
But that evening, after the bride and groom had departed, I was hanging on by an emotional thread, at the reception pounding gin-and-tonics, when I was offered lines. Yes, lines of coke. I was no stranger to the drug, having withstood college in the late 1970s, and more than my fair share of nights at Studio, Xenon, and Mudd Club, among others. So I said yes.
And that was the last time I ever used cocaine. A watershed.
That hangover is still memorable, for its pain and duration. My whole body felt as though a tractor had rolled back and forth over it. My mother - I crashed at her apartment - either didn't comprehend, or didn't ask, and I did not return to the land of the cogent or ambulatory for forty-eight hours.
And once I did, I knew that was it. I was done, with so many things, the ex-boyfriend, the drug. I kid around today, and say that I could be surrounded by mountains of the stuff, and I would not indulge. I've had opportunities since, albeit rare, and I stay away, steer clear.
I suppose we're calmer these days. The people who attended that service, those I assume are close to my own age, now seem settled, somewhat fleshier around the mid-sections, conservatively-attired, with upscale but low-key jewelry. They drive solid and safe automobiles. They talked about their families, their children. A couple of fellows told genuinely funny stories.
And yet, I felt apart. I don't live in a pristine family-oriented community. Indeed, I have little in common with married people, raising teenagers.
I could sense the city in the back of mind: "Get back up here already!"
One fellow called me "Holly-lama." That was funny.
Another fellow, one who caught my eye at the church, when we were reintroduced at the luncheon, I asked if we had met before. He responded that he did not think so.
Hmmm. It came to me afterward, after I made my farewells, and drove back to the beach to conjure memories of summers past.
The one and only time I took a hit of Ecstasy was on a date with a guy who (I think?) resembled that fellow. I cannot remember his name. Maybe his family name was an English tradesperson-name, like Farmer or Carpenter. Maybe not. He was from Rumson, and he drank too much, way too much. I think that same guy might have turned up at Mary and Matt's wedding reception - held at a big, semi-private beach club in Sea Bright (Matt told me the place has long since burned to the ground).
When he saw me, he stumbled so slightly, and either reached for or pointed at me, and said, "I'm gonna take that girl home and drill her."
The last two words sounded like "driller," rhyming with "killer." Some things you don't remember, some things you just don't forget.
I know that, even with too many cocktails and my sinuses throbbing, I got out of there, and drove straight to my mother's place.
Funny how the memories of such events are buried, most of the time. I hadn't thought of that night in years, and yet there I was, driving to the surfer beach in North End, like I did when I skipped school, eager to sit my butt on the sand and watch the boys.
The beach is built-up in places now, new condominium complexes, enormous townhouses that abut the sea wall - sure to be destroyed in the next whopper of a hurricane.
It was time to leave the summers behind and return north.
As I drove through the toll gate onto the Garden State Parkway (whoever invented EZ-Pass needs to be canonized), snow flurries blew down and all around me. I was home inside of seventy minutes flat.