When I was a little girl the occasion always meant I got to wear a pretty dress, masquerade as a very small adult, and feast on finger sandwiches. There was the ubiquitous floral wall paper, huge prints of wisteria or lilly of the valley, always offset by some shade of plum or kelly green carpeting. The flower-printed walls often matched the arrangements, which were always finished in beautiful yellow or royal purple bows that I imagined in my hair. The warm scent of the deli tray competed with the distinctly unfloral scent of the florist's preservative spray; the smell was musty and denoted every thing my child's mind could classify as old. Maybe right fully so, in all of the visitations I was toted along to in my youth, we never once attended the funeral of anyone that didn't bear deep wrinkles on their folded hands and peaceful faces.
I grew up with death. I touched the cold hands of the deceased and I didn't flinch to think they might touch back. Somehow in my cherubic mind I understood that the people we visited were, well, dead. Each funeral was different; some families wept, others rejoiced, but all were gathered in celebration and memory of a person who was cherished. It was that observation that put me right with the idea of dying at a very young age. I rather liked the idea that when I passed I would get a very ornate box with satin pillows and loads of flowers to see me out of this world, and they'd better not forget the finger sandwiches!
I don't know if it was those early experiences with death, the people whom I never personally met but was happy to see off to the next life, that provided me a safe distance with which to process mortality, but I'm so thankful for them. Since girlhood death has fascinated and confounded me, really touched me, time and time again. Whether it's contemplating the act of dying, a light-hearted conversation with friends that somehow turns to the serious business of the afterlife, or the few dearly departed that were a direct personal loss, there is part of me that embraces the poignancy of a final goodbye.
A couple of nights ago the little old Baptist lady who woke up at 4am most mornings to toil over bourbon balls and pralines for the candy shop passed away. She never took a sip of the bourbon she so generously poured in each confection, and as I learned from her daughter at the visitation tonight, she took extra care to wrap each empty bottle in the paper bag it came in, diligently concealing it in the bottom of her trash can. She was a tiny woman with permed hair that was maintained once a week for Lord knows how many years. She always called me Laurie, but I liked that. Tonight I passed through the familiar floral hallway, traipsing over mint green carpet in to a room that was simply labeled "Eva." She laid expressionless beneath the satin covered interior of the casket lid, which was embroidered with praying hands. Though her taut face and deflated little body didn't quite bear the resemblance of the smiling woman I remembered in the photograph next to her resting place, Eva was there. Her daughter rose to meet us with grateful hugs and Eva was all around us. She was there in the look of peace in her daughter's eyes and in the smiles and banter that filled that small room.
Funerals always make me think back to a one-act play written by members of my high school's theatre company. The play is about a student who is a bit of an outsider at school, quiet, feels misunderstood and knows few friends. He dies at the climax of the play and spends the falling action watching his own funeral, commenting on the absurdity of the teachers' grief, roused to anger over classmates that once teased him, who now hovered over his lifeless body weeping and consoling one another. "You didn't know me! You didn't even talk to me!" he shouts. "Why do you care now?" The play, hauntingly, has no resolution. In the self-importance of my teenage years I remember thinking, "Yeah! They were so cruel to him! They don't have a right to this grief! They don't have a right to use this person they don't even know as some throw-away emotional vehicle!" But now, I kind of get it. People touch each other in ways they don't realize, sometimes in ways those around them don't realize. Grief can be about anything, not just saying goodbye, and conversely, saying goodbye does not always give rise to sorrow. To me, that is the essence, and the importance of this ritual we call "visitation" and "funeral." It's selfish, maybe, but it's a process of finding finality, of seeing to believe. It's the experience of knowing that a person is gone.
Tonight, tears did not well in my eyes for the loss of Eva. I looked at her soul's vessel in that box, and I looked at her portrait, and I sent her to that next plane of existence, whatever it may be. I know she is gone, and so I silently thanked her for introducing me to just how creamy and perfect a praline can taste, and I said goodbye.
I know it creeps some people out, the thought of congregating to look at someone and share tearful hugs with people you don't know, but it's a custom that I truly love. And you know the irony in that? The single most instrumental person in cultivating that value in me chose to leave this world as if she'd never existed at all. Cremated with no wake, no funeral, not so much as a living room eulogy, she would have gone without an obituary, too, had it not been a service of the funeral home who came to transport the temple of my Mother. To this day I kind of hate the two men in suits who carried her out, but I couldn't tell you why. "Be gentle!" I wanted to say, but I knew it didn't matter. Cremated. Cremated. The word hardly made sense.
It's the one reality of death that I'll probably never fully grasp or understand. The same little girl who got in a tizzy over finger sandwiches used to beg to go to Cave Hill Cemetery on the weekends to feed the ducks, frolic among the headstones, and take crayon rubbings of those that were beautifully embossed or engraved. We took bouquets to my grandfather's site and I would watch the act of the visit. I would watch other families arrange their bright floral offerings and sit with their loved ones as well. What a wonderful thing it is to be buried! We can still chat, we can laugh and remember and be together again! There's a place for this, how wonderful. I remember thinking that, so many times over and still to this day. How lovely to be remembered, to enjoy some connection that transcends the tangible world.
I can sit with Mom, she's in a little oriental snuff bottle that came from my grandparents' collection and was given to me as a child because I admired it so. But to be honest, I'd rather just sit with her memory or a photo. That snuff bottle and those broad-shouldered men in suits loosely fit in the same category of my strong dislike. I don't know why, but nearly every time I think of my mother I'm hit with pangs of yearning to have a place to meet with her that is permanent, the resting place and commemoration she deserves, whether her humble soul wanted it that way or not.
And then, it's nice, too. All thoughts of her postmortem wishes aside, sometimes it's like she's not gone at all. It's almost just as easy to imagine her roaming the earth somewhere on an extended vacation, due home any time now but at no particular time at all. I'll probably never absent-mindedly wonder how Eva is doing, the closure is there, but I often impulsively think, "Oh! I have to call Mom!" And maybe that was by design, maybe it wasn't that she wanted people to avoid making a fuss but that for once in her life she was afraid of the finality. If a person disappears, are they ever really gone? I like to think that choosing to break the mold of passing that she so profoundly poured my little heart in to was her way of saying, "I'm always here."
And that is why we have never said goodbye.
(Post-Script: Thank you, Eva, not only for the pralines, but for bringing me to a point of peace that in 10 years I had yet to attain)
