Losing Mum and Pup

by Christopher Buckley

  The next day, Rick drove up to Sharon to inspect the facilities. He called.

  That organ, he said. My God! It must have been tuned last during the Truman administration. I’ve heard better-sounding hurdy-gurdies. But don’t you worry about it. I’ll think of something. Like maybe dynamite.

  Pup had served in the army in World War II, and though he hadn’t stormed ashore at Omaha Beach, I liked the idea of giving him his military due. * “You need his DS-214,” said Brian Kenney, the Sharon funeral director.

  My advice to you is: If your dad—or mom—served in the military and you would like to have the honors at the funeral, find out now where that DS-214 (certificate of service) is. I spent many hours in the days ahead trying to find his. And I had a friend in the Pentagon, pretty high up, looking. And the Pentagon couldn’t find it. (Well, that’s not quite accurate: They located seventy-four William F. Buckleys who’d been discharged from the army in 1946; but none of them was my William F. Buckley.) Finally, after an archaeological dig so intensive it might have unearthed a second Troy, the elusive document was found—at the Stamford Town Hall, where he had deposited it in 1952. * So now we had that.

  At which point Brian called to say that he’d just seen the weather report for Saturday: torrential, freezing rain. “I was just down to the cemetery,” he said, pulling off several layers of rubber outerwear. “It’s underwater.”

  There was a certain symmetry to it: just the sort of weather Pup liked to go sailing in! But at least it made moot my negotiations with “Father” over digging a winter grave. There wasn’t much point in bringing in the “special” (translation: really expensive) equipment from Poughkeepsie if the grave was going to be a cistern by the time we tried to lower him in. But the church was booked, and Buckleys were flying in from everywhere. Brian volunteered in his springy, upbeat way, “I have just the place for him.” An aboveground vault in another cemetery. “It’s actually ideal,” Brian said. I was unfamiliar with the logistics of body storage, but it seemed like an occasion to say, “Whatever.”

  The night before the funeral, I brought Pup home to Stamford for one last night in his home. He arrived by hearse, the pecan coffin covered with the American flag. We all choked up at that.

  Once he had him situated in the dining room, Chris said, “Would you care to put in those items?” I nodded, and he opened the casket, and there was my Pup, in his gray suit with the white shirt and the i love my wife tie. He looked all right. But at the sight of him, we all lost it. I stroked his hair, careful not to touch his skin, which I knew, from contact with other bodies, can be a jolt, the hardness and the cold.

  I’d transferred Mum’s ashes from the brass plutonium canister to a red Chinese lacquered box I’d bought her years before for a birthday. I laid it on Pup’s lap, so now they were together again. I put his rosary in his hands. Danny put in a jar of peanut butter. We looked at each other and simultaneously had the same thought. He went off and returned with the TV remote clicker and we put that in, too, and then we said one last good-bye, and I kissed him on the hair and we closed the lid and that was that. I pinned to the flag his Medal of Freedom. It looked heroic, and I was very proud of him.

  Camilla, his English goddaughter, daughter of his great friend Sir Alistair Horne, was on hand, and being British, she had taken charge of the flowers, rearranging and freshening them and adding gin to the water. “Always add gin,” she said. “They adore it.” Camilla and Conor went off into the garden to smoke cigarettes. It was the first time I had seen my sixteen-year-old son with a cigarette, but there was something weirdly sweet about it, the two of them. I can’t explain.

  I put on a Whiffenpoofs CD and through the night played “Down by the Salley Gardens,” a haunting melody set to the Yeats poem; and “Time After Time.” A hundred people came and went. There is something to be said for having the body. You could, I suppose, hold a wake around an urnful of ashes, but it’s not quite the same.

  Everyone drank and ate and talked; much of it was merry. The rain sheeted against the windows. There were three priests, all friends of Pup’s. At seven, when it was time, I said to Father Kevin, “Padre, care to do the mojo now?” He put on vestments. Two other priests joined him in saying prayers over the body. We all said an “Our Father.” Father Kevin produced an aspergillum, the perforated bulb-shaped piece of metal that’s dipped in the holy water to sprinkle a crowd or altar or coffin. I thought, watching as he wet the flag: church and state, literally fused.

  I spent the night on the couch beside him, watching the candles guttering, listening to the rain and to the Whiffenpoofs, waking, stiff-necked, at four to find myself with a blanket over me. Camilla had come down in the night and covered me up.

  Brian arrived next morning at eight and we loaded Pup into the hearse for his last drive up to Sharon. The hearse driver was Brian’s father-in-law. We had a bit of a discussion over how to get to Sharon. Having made the drive perhaps three hundred times, I had my views; but he had his. He seemed quite certain, even adamant, so I said my mantra, “Whatever,” and off we went, the hearse and eight cars following. Fifteen minutes into the drive, he turned onto a very unfamiliar road and then turned back toward Stamford. I cell-phoned, “Halt,” to Brian, bringing our motorcade to a stop in a subdivision. Brian’s father-in-law stoutly maintained that this was the way. “Whatever” has its limitations as a mantra.

  At length, we got back on a correct road, at which point another aspect of Brian’s father-in-law’s driving became evident: his tendency to drive at eighty miles an hour in the rain while leading a procession of eight cars. This made for a lively caravan. We wove in and out of traffic on Route 22, blaring our horn occasionally at some innocent interloper. Lucy and Conor, beside me, held on for dear life. We made it in record time—a fitting homage, I suppose, to Pup’s driving, which was never less than bracing.

  Conor led his grandfather’s coffin into the church. The pews were all filled with Buckleys. They had been well worn over the years by my family’s knees. Lucy gave the first reading, Psalm 121, a favorite of her lovely Episcopalian family, who, charmingly, recite it aloud together every time a family member leaves on a trip. They call it the “Going Away” prayer.

  I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help….

  Conor did the second reading, from Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanity, saith the preacher, all is vanity.” * Father Kevin gave the homily, in which he related a conversation he’d had with Pup some years earlier, on the subject of religious doubt. Father Kevin had said to Pup at the lunch table, “Everyone at some point has doubts,” and Pup had looked up from his borscht and said, “I never did.”

  I gave the eulogy and managed to lose it halfway through the first sentence. I recovered. When I told everyone about putting Mum in the coffin with him, saying, “It was the only way we’d get her back to Sharon,” the church exploded with laughter. Mum had stopped coming up for Thanksgiving, well, a long time ago. At first she gave excuses, and then she stopped bothering even with those.

  It was still pouring rain, so we did the military ceremony at the entrance to the church. A citation was read. The rifleman fired the volley. A bagpiper played “Amazing Grace.” The flag was folded into a triangle and presented to me, with the thanks of a grateful nation. As it was handed to me, I heard sobs from behind me. The sergeant then presented Conor, standing beside me, with the empty cartridges from the rifle volley. “Cool,” I whispered. Then a bugler sounded “Taps.” Eight of us carried Pup out into the rain and loaded him back into the hearse. “Good-bye, my friend,” said Danny, but it wasn’t good-bye quite yet.

  CHAPTER 21

  There’s a Mr. X, Apparently

  Two mornings later, around nine, I was in bed, groggy, still on the first cup of coffee, Pup’s dogs, Daisy and Rupert, chewing on each other at my feet—it seemed I had inherited them along with the other stuff—when the phone rang. A voice like a sonic boom: “Is this Christopher Buckley?” I stammered yes, though
I was sure my affirmation could only come as a letdown to someone with such an august voice. “This is Car-dinal Egan.”

  I sat bolt upright. (Once an altar boy, always an altar boy.) “Yes,” I said, trying frantically to remember the correct ecclesiastical title, “Your”—Grace? Excellency?… quickly, man!—aha—“Eminence.”

  Pup and I had discussed funeral arrangements some years ago. He’d said, “If I’m still famous, do it at Saint Patrick’s. * If not, just do it in Stamford at Saint Mary’s.” To judge from the amount of ink and TV coverage his death was generating, he was very much “still famous.” I’d sent word through a priest friend up the chain of command to the archdiocese, asking if the cathedral might be available. Now the cardinal was calling. I was impressed by the fact that he’d dialed the number himself. None of that “I have His Eminence. Please hold, you miserable, sinful wretch.” He was jovial and we joked about our common priest friend, whom he called (in jest) “a thoroughly disreputable character.”

  The pope was coming to town, and Easter loomed, but the cardinal found a spot on the cathedral calendar between this rock and that hard place. Mother Church can be a bureaucracy, to be sure, but when she moves, she moves with sureness. †

  My first call was to Henry Kissinger. “Well, Henry,” I said, “I seem to do little else these days but ask you to give eulogies.” He choked up and said that it would be an honor. I mean this as a compliment: For a Teuton with a steel-trap mind who was once more or less in charge of the world, Henry Kissinger has a heart of Jell-O. He is a certifiable member of the Bawl Brigade. He said he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get through it. I said I’d sit in the front pew and make faces at him, if he’d do the same for me while I gave mine.

  Word went out, and once again I was impressed with the celerity of our Internet age. Calls started coming in right away. I had decided to make the funeral open to the public, partly for good, partly for selfish reasons. I’d spent a great many man-hours on Mum’s (of necessity) invitation-only memorial service, and it’s no fun at all having to tell so-and-so that, no, sorry, Aunt Irma and Cousin Ida can’t come, even if they were great admirers. I didn’t want to play rope-line bouncer at St. Pat’s. You—okay. No, you can’t come in. Oh, yes, Mr. Vidal, we’ve been expecting you. We have you right up front, next to Norman Podhoretz.

  The White House called. The president could not attend but would like Vice President Cheney to attend; moreover, he would like Vice President Cheney to speak. This was very thoughtful of the White House, but problematic. I envisioned two thousand people standing in line waiting to file through Secret Service metal detectors—and in the rain, almost certainly, since it had so far poured on every event connected with Pup’s departure from this vale of tears. I said to the White House, That’s very thoughtful, and I am sincerely touched, but given the security requirements, perhaps it would be best to pass. The White House called back and said, We’re not trying to “sell” you, but we do this all the time. The vice president attended Mike Deaver’s and Jeane Kirkpatrick’s services, and the disruption was minimal.

  I thought, How I wish I could discuss this with Pup! Pup just loved dilemmas of this kind. He would not have been blasé about being paid tribute to by a sitting vice president of the United States. But having myself been through many a Secret Service metal detector, I know very well that the disruption is not exactly “minimal,” and the prospect of two thousand well-wishers having to empty their purses and being spread-eagled and wanded at the church door was not a consummation devoutly to be wished.

  There was this, too: If Mr. Cheney came, he must be allowed to give remarks. But His Eminence had made it clear—gently—that there would be a limit of two eulogies. Over the years, there’s been an inflationary tendency to pile on the eulogies, and Mother Church has started to put down her foot, on the perfectly reasonable principle that a funeral or memorial mass is a sacrament, not a meeting of the Friars Club. (Let’s save the roasting for the afterlife, shall we?) The archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, had recently issued a ukase to the effect that there would be no eulogies at all in his archdiocese. (A bit harsh, methinks, but there it is.) At any rate, this left me with a Hobson’s choice: Tell Henry Kissinger to step aside or give up my own slot. So there was nothing to do but decline the White House, as gently as I could.

  There was a lively presidential campaign going on at the time (you may have heard about it). Pup being who he was, I wondered if we would be hearing from the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. We never did, not a peep; odd, I thought, as he and I are old acquaintances. But presidential campaigns are, God knows, busy times. * Also odd, but very sweetly so, were the calls that did come in. One of the first was from Senator John Kerry. There was zero reason for him to have done that; it was a grace note, pure and simple. And then, one day as I was sitting in Pup’s study feeling sorry for myself as I set about the (truly) enormous task of clearing it out, the phone rang. A gentle, sandpapery voice came on the line: “I’m looking for Christopher Buckley.” Yes, this is he. “Oh, Chris, it’s George McGovern calling.”

  Pup and George McGovern were political antipodes, but they had become good friends a decade earlier after engaging in a series of public debates. I remembered Pup grinning one day over lunch, announcing, “Say, have I told you about my new best friend?” (Pause. Twinkle of the eyes.) “George McGovern! He turns out to be the single nicest human being I’ve ever met.”

  I recall my jaw dropping. When he ran for president in 1972, Pup had written and spoken some pretty tough things about George McGovern. As I winched my lower mandible back into place, I reflected that it wasn’t all that improbable. Some of WFB’s great friendships were with card-carrying members of the vast left-wing conspiracy: John Kenneth Galbraith, Murray Kempton, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ira Glasser (head of the ACLU, for heaven’s sake), Allard K. Lowenstein, and so on. But there were piquant ironies to the friendship with McGovern.

  As I’ve previously noted, Pup’s boss at the CIA in 1951 was E. Howard Hunt. Howard was, as you know, arrested in June 1972 whilst jimmying open the door to the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate, in an effort, among other things, to put paid to George McGovern’s presidential campaign. (A Pyrrhic bit of burglarizing, given what happened the following November, when only one state went for McGovern.) Pup had left the CIA’s employ in 1952, but had remained friends with Hunt and was godfather to—and, indeed, trustee on behalf of—several of his four children.

  As Watergate unfolded, I found myself, home on some weekends from college, in the basement sauna with Pup after dinner, listening as he confided his latest hush-hush phone call from Howard. This was dramatic stuff. The calls would come at prearranged times, from phone booths. One night, Pup looked truly world-weary. Howard’s wife, Dorothy, had just been killed in a commercial airline crash while on a mission delivering hush fund money.

  It turns out that there’s a safety deposit box…

  I was twenty-one, an aspirant staff reporter on the Yale Daily News. Watergate was a huge story. No, make that the biggest story since the sack of Rome. Oh, how my little mouth salivated. Not that I could repeat a single word of any of this.

  A safety deposit box?

  There’s a Mr. X, apparently. The way it works is this: I don’t know his identity, but he knows mine. Howard has given him instructions: If he’s killed—

  Killed? Jesus….

  If something happens—whatever—in that event, Mr. X will contact me. He has the key to the safety deposit box. He and I are to open it together.

  And?

  Pup looked at me heavily. Decide what to do with the contents.

  Jesus, Pup.

  Don’t swear, Big Shot.

  What… sort of contents are we talking about?

  This next moment, I remember very vividly. Pup was staring at the floor of the sauna, hunched over. His shoulders heaved. He let out a sigh.

  I don’t know, exactly, but it could theoretically involv
e information that could lead to the impeachment of the president of the United States.

  This conversation was taking place in December 1972. In the post-Clinton era, the word impeachment has lost much of its shock value, but back then, before the revelation of the Oval Office tapes or the defection of John Dean, the phrase impeachment of the president of the United States packed a very significant wallop. I was speechless. Pup was, to be sure, a journalist, but he took no pleasure in possessing this odious stick of dynamite. His countenance was pure Gethsemane: Let this cup pass from me. He would later recuse himself publicly, in the pages of his own magazine, from comment on Watergate, pleading conflict of interest based on his status as trustee of the Hunt children.

  And now George McGovern, whose campaign had been the target of Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy and the “plumbers,” was on the phone from South Dakota, to condole someone he had never met and to say that he was planning to come to the memorial service, adding with what sounded like a grin, “If I can make my way through this fifteen-foot-high snowdrift outside my house.” I put down the phone and wept.

  CHAPTER 22

  Home Is the Sailor

  Iwrote my eulogy in Mum and Pup’s bedroom early one morning as the sun was coming up over Long Island Sound. At that hour the mind is hard and focused, and I thought this would be the right atmosphere in which to write my words. I’ll admit to performance anxiety: I would be following the Reverend George Rutler and Henry Kissinger, more or less the two most eloquent speakers on earth; and St. Patrick’s Cathedral is Yankee Stadium. So as the sun rose, my thoughts were, Let’s try not to screw this up.

  Lucy and the kids and I spent the night before the service at the Yale Club, a few blocks from St. Pat’s. We breakfasted in the dining room. At the next table was an old friend of Pup’s who’d worked on his 1965 mayoral campaign. * He arched his eyebrows and reported that the “scuttlebutt” at a dinner the night before was that “Egan’s pulled out.”