Jan 29, 2025* POST from Substack*
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On Black Friday we met Piper Dave in the cemetery with a box full of Mackula.
Translation: We hired our friend Dave, who plays the bagpipes, to meet us in the cemetery to bury my dad’s ashes the day after Thanksgiving.
It was all Nancy’s fault, really.
Mackula died in January of 2008. Nancy died in July of 2024.
I met Nancy in the 6th grade and have called her sister since then. Mackula (my dad) would take us to movies or shopping or lunches or shows, and he would introduce us (to anyone really) as his daughters. Other friends were just friends: ”This is my daughter Lucy and her friend Ethel” or “This is my daughter Veronica and her friend Betty”.
But my dad adored Nancy, and though not his child, she was introduced as my sibling. He’d say things like: “These are my daughters, Frick and Frack” or “These are my daughters, The Notorious Twosome” making us sound like a failed vaudeville act or criminal runaways from a sideshow.
I would do anything for Nancy, and in her final days, she requested that her ashes be divided and scattered in various locations.
We told Hurricane (my mom) that part of Nancy’s ashes should go near daddy, and since both of his (biological) children and grandchildren were all going to be in town at Thanksgiving, wasn’t it was time to actually bury the man? She agreed.
After a brief day or two of me and GB (my brother) having blood pressure panic surges, she located him. Hurricane has moved three times since Mackula’s death and some sleuthing was required, but the box of ashes was found, in a dresser drawer where she keeps sweaters she’s not worn since 1988 and her winter scarves and socks. “Would y’all calm down. I would’ve found him when the weather turned real cold,” she said, rolling her eyes.
We’d decided we’d do it at 10am, then drive back to my house and eat some of daddy’s favorite foods at lunch as a gastronomic tribute. This meant steamed crab legs, steamed oysters, spicy pterodactyl wings, and Corona beers. Along with Thanksgiving leftovers and desserts, it was a feast to make him proud.
The oysters, though, were the culinary coup-de-grace.
Mackula loved steamed oysters more than a rare ribeye (and if you knew the man, you know he ate a lot of those). We’re a family that considers an all-you-can-eat oyster roast an acceptable challenge. In the months before he died, we made every oyster connection we could on the Carolina coasts, even once driving to Murrells Inlet to have them at one of his favorite places- called, (of course), Nance’s.
For Black Friday preparations, I ordered 150 oysters and Big Haggis (my husband) cleaned out the big steamer pot and basket, filled the propane tank, and found all the oyster knives.
Hurricane was excited and hyper-focused on the crab legs and oysters, and weeks in advance began issuing lame culinary threats about over-steaming them. Every time we spoke to her about the graveside ceremony, she spoke about how ready she was to eat some “good ole” steamed oysters. “We could throw one oyster in the hole with your daddy,” she said, completely missing/ignoring the horror that registered with me and GB.
“What the actual fuck?” he later railed, mirroring my own inner monologue.
“Let’s throw an oyster IN THE HOLE with your daddy. There’s a sentence no child should ever hear. Thanks Hurricane,” I commiserated.
“Daddy would come back and haunt her for wasting a perfectly good oyster.”
“If he hasn’t become a haint already, I think that ship has sailed.”
We paid the gravedigger holiday overtime. We hired Dave to play two stanzas of four different musical pieces on the bagpipes to sandwich wee stories we would share about dad. With a camping chair, a flask, and a plan, we drove in the opposite direction from the Black Friday crowds and sales, and gathered in the cemetery to settle Mackula into his final resting place.
Stories were shared. Tears were shed. By 11am, Mackula was interred with the women he loved most who died before him: his mother and two sisters. He would appreciate that we kept our wee ceremony short and sweet; it was chilly, and we needed to go home and fire up an oyster pot.
And we did not toss any oysters in the hole with him.
The week prior, when I reminded Hurricane that Nancy had been allergic to shellfish, she nodded solemnly and said, “Well. Skip that then. We can’t do that.”
Nancy’s wishes moved my family to get my dad out of a drawer and into his family plot. And the same dead woman’s allergies were enough to move my mom away from one of her more recent hair-brained ideas.
Gilbert to my Sullivan, still a beloved part of my family’s madcap revue.
Thanks Nancy.
Derelict Debutante 