GRIEVING NOTES
Day Three: Wednesday, October 17, 2007
MONTAGUE: Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-nightI had to get up early Wednesday morning. That was harsh because I didn't even really try to get enough sleep the night before. We had to meet with the funeral director at nine, so I did what I had been doing since I got the news that mom had died: I just kept moving. Coffee came soon enough.
-From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
The funeral home we used is actually a pretty nice place. It's fairly modern, built within the last ten years or so, well lit, more like a pleasant office space than a house of the dead. I was particularly fond of the fact that the place seems to employ none of the traditional, creepy, morose types that have populated most funeral homes in my experience. These were just normal people here to help us out in our moment of sadness.
It's also the same place that planned and facilitated the funeral for my old pal Lex's mom Effie a few years back. For some strange reason, I found that fact comforting. I guess it was maybe because close friends had gone down this road before. Familiar territory.
Attending the meeting were my father, my older brother Chris, my younger brother Steve, his fiancee, the funeral director, and, of course, myself. We talked about the casket. We talked about the funeral, which was to be held at the church where I was baptized when I was twelve. We talked about the preacher, the man who baptized me, who was coming out of his recent retirement to perform the service. We talked about "the viewing" or what Catholics would call a wake. We talked about how much it was all going to cost. We talked about the memorial web page.
Even though I listened intently, I found that I really had no contribution that I could make to the discussions. Nothing to say. I didn't really care.
I understand the importance of the social grieving ritual. I know that such ceremony has evolved in Western civilization over the centuries and plays a very necessary role for both loved ones and the community in general. I know that it all taps deeply into the Western psyche, the human consciousness, and is not to be trivialized. There are good reasons that we have funerals.
But when I found myself sitting there going over all the details, I realized that the Star Trek Klingon view on dead bodies is much more appealing to me than the traditional Eurocentric view: "It is only an empty shell now. Please treat it as such."
It's not my mother anymore. Yes, it housed for sixty seven years the spark that was my mother, but not anymore. Mom's gone. What remains is just a shadow, an image. But not her.
After the meeting, I took my filthy suit to the cleaners to be ready for the funeral on Friday. They asked me for my phone number, so I gave them Dad's. They told me it would be ready on Thursday and they gave me a receipt. On it was my mother's name; apparently, the phone number was listed on the computer as her account. I asked them to change the name to Dad's.
I went back to my parents' house and took a nap. I needed rest for what was going to happen later. We were going back to the funeral home to see the body that evening.
My father and brothers had already seen her dead, as I mentioned in my last post. Now it was my turn. We stood outside the door of the viewing room for a few minutes, and then my father turned to me. "This may be shocking," he said. He put his arm tightly around my shoulder and walked me in, Chris, Steve, and Lesley closely behind us. I took a deep breath.
And there she was.
She looked asleep. Everytime I'd ever seen a corpse in a casket, I'd always thought that it never looks like the person when he or she was alive. Not this time. She looked the same as when I saw her last in late July. I started crying.
We all started crying.
My dad finally spoke, and marveled at what good work the funeral people had done. We all agreed that she looked great. We told stories about her. We talked about how wonderful she was. We wandered around the room looking at the pictures of her on display that Chris had picked out. We cried some more. We told more stories.
At one point, standing next to the casket, while talking about what a good person she was, about how much she had done with her life, my dad sobbed and blurted out that he didn't deserve her.
I said, "Dad, you mustn't say such things."
It is a strange and powerful thing seeing my father weep. Strange because I so rarely see it. Indeed, I can only remember one time, years ago, at his mother's grave, when I saw him cry. Now, I was seeing it continually. Powerful because his grief utterly humanizes him; the authority figure for whom I still have some small sense of fear melts into pure humanity. In our sadness, we are exactly alike, two men devastated by profound loss. I've never felt closer to my father than the night I first saw my mother's body with him.
Many hours later, back at home, after Chris and Dad had gone to bed, I walked out into the back yard and sat on a bench next to the grave where they had buried my mother's dog Madonna, who died almost exactly a year before Mom. She really, really loved that dog, and so did I. Now they're both gone.
I looked up into the cold star-studded sky and located the only constellation I know, Orion. It was a beautiful night.
Mom and Dad in the mid 1960s
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