Father's Night
When I was growing up, every Christmas Eve my old Italian grandmother would put out food on the dining room table as a gift for the souls of the dearly departed. She had enough of them, poor woman, including her husband and my Aunt Mary, who died at 18 from lung disease. It's an old world custom, which I'm sure can be found in many cultures, and as a kid I found it somewhere between cool and creepy. I remember my grandmother as a tough old dame, but my Aunt Marie said grandma was never the same after Mary died. She was only human and the loss of her daughter took a lot out of her. I guess she was better at hiding her pain than a lot of people. Now that I'm dealing with my father's recent death, I see that grandma's yearly tribute to the dead was more for her benefit than for any wandering spirit. Putting out food for her deceased relatives was a way of connecting with them, of keeping them here them alive in her world. I think of grandma, who died when I was in the ...