RECORD STORE TALES #1164: It’s Not Personal: An Uncle Paul Story

Jen and I have withstood a lot of funerals over the years.  Some were really great tributes to the people we lost.  Others, less so.

When Jen’s mom died, she wanted a Catholic funeral, so of course we obliged.  Jen and I are both what you might call “lapsed Catholics”.  We were both baptised, but stopped practising the faith decades ago.  While preparing for Jen’s mom’s funeral, we were asked if we were Catholics.  Not sure how to respond while still getting Jen’s mom the funeral she wanted, we both answered yes.  Father Imperial (yes, that was his name) knew we were lying.  We had separated the ashes into two urns – a big no no.  Catholics believe you can only get into heaven if your ashes are in one urn.  (Yay dogma!)  His disappointment was visible when nobody in the church knew the responses to the Catholic service.  We did our best, but that was not a good funeral for us.

We had Uncle Paul’s funeral in 2023, but the pressure wasn’t on us this time.  I was asked to be a casket bearer, but I used my gammy right arm as an excuse not to do it.  (I’m glad I didn’t; I watched the casket being carried down stairs and over headstones, and I could not have done it.)  We just sat in the church and paid our respects.  The funeral wasn’t very personal.  In most of the other funerals we’d done, the pastor asked for stories and personality traits that he could read during the service.  Those were good funerals.  People laughed, people cried, people shared memories.  Uncle Paul’s wasn’t like that.  It was very impersonal.  It could have been for anybody.

11 months later, there was a memorial service for people lost in the last two months of 2023.  It was the same priest presiding, and Uncle Paul was to have a candle lit in his name.  We all decided to attend the memorial mass.

We weren’t familiar with the area and had to park six blocks away.  The church was packed and we were not able to sit together.  We sat and did the things you do at a Catholic mass.  You stand, you kneel, you stand, you kneel.  Our kneeling bench wasn’t working, so that was awkward.

Finally they started reading the names of the people lost, so a candle could be lit in their name.  It wasn’t alphabetical, so we just listened and waited to hear Uncle Paul’s name.

“Paul Laderno,” said the priest.  The same priest who presided over his funeral.

“They didn’t even say his name right!” I whispered to my mom next to me.  I didn’t care if anyone heard me.  I was very upset.

How hard is it to say our name?  I now had a new variation to add to our long list of mispronunciations.  It felt so impersonal.  It felt like nobody cared, except us.  A real disservice to a great man, who was indeed a man of faith.  He deserved better.  “Laderno”.  Normally I’m the one to see the humour in things, but I didn’t this time.

We had a nice visit with my Aunt Maria after the service.  That made up for the disappointing mass.

Uncle Paul’s resting place is now capped with a stone, a marker so cool it deserves to be shared here.  This is the kind of memorial he deserves.  On the back, a crisp picture of his beloved vintage ‘Cuda.  A Blue Jay logo sits in a corner, waiting for my Aunt one day.   This is closer to how I’ll remember him.  Always there for his cars and my aunt.

We don’t often talk about cemeteries and headstones being cool…but my uncle’s is cool.