The Funeral Home that Had Been Somebody’s House
My preoccupation with the dying and the dead started with my Grandfather Kimball when I was fourteen and he was dead. He was the first person who had died in my life and it was the first time that I was going to a funeral. But my mother and my father didn’t tell me what to expect when we got out to the funeral home. I only remember that I was told that I had to go, that I had to look nice, and that looking nice meant that I had to comb my hair, wear a belt, and tuck my shirt in.
I got dressed up in my best clothes and the rest of my family did too. We all got into the family car and drove to a little town out in the country where my grandfather had lived. Nobody said anything on the drive out there, but the car windows were open and the driving wind was messing everybody’s hair up and making our good clothes seem worn out.
My father parked the family car in a gravel parking lot behind what I thought was somebody’s house. I realized later that it had been somebody’s house, but that it had become a funeral home. We got out of the family car, walked around to the front of the funeral home, walked up the front steps, opened a screen door, and walked into what must have been somebody’s living room and had become the front room of the funeral home.
The screen door closed behind us with a slap against the wood doorframe. The windows in that front room of the funeral home were all open and the wind was blowing through it, but it was still hot and smelled musty inside there.
My mother and my father stopped inside the screen door and my sister and I stopped behind them. My mother and my father were talking to somebody or somebody was talking to them. I don’t remember what they said, but I remember that I wasn’t included in the conversation and that I started looking around that front room.
I know now that it was the viewing room that we had walked into when we walked into the funeral home, but I didn’t know what it was then or why I could see my Grandfather Kimball at the other end of the viewing room all laid out inside his casket.
I knew that he was dead, that his body was going to be inside a casket, that people were going to say nice things about him, and that they were going to bury him in a grave. But I didn’t expect it to be so casual — for the funeral home to be somebody’s house, for the viewing room to be somebody’s living room, and for there to be people standing around talking in somebody’s living room while there was a casket with my dead grandfather inside it in the living room too. I thought that I was going to be able to approach my grandfather’s casket, and that somehow in that approach that I was going to be able to prepare myself for his death, for him being dead, and for how that was going to feel.
But I wasn’t prepared for it. It felt as if I had been punched in the stomach by somebody that I couldn’t see when I saw my grandfather’s dead body inside a casket and on top of a table in that living room. I didn’t know that the casket was going to be open. I didn’t know that we were going to have to look at him or that the skin on his face would be so limp that it wouldn’t look like his face anymore.
Nobody told me that grief feels like fear. I kept trying to swallow, but my mouth had dried up. My tongue got thick and stuck to the roof of my mouth. My jaw started trembling up and down. I tried to hold my mouth closed with my hand. My eyes started opening and closing too. I tried to keep myself from crying.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I closed my eyes tight and wiped them dry. I took deep breaths. I don’t think that anybody else noticed any of this. My mother and my father stopped talking with those other people. We all walked up to my grandfather’s casket.
I remember that my father made me look at his father. I remember thinking that must have been what we were there for. I think that my father thought that was what we were supposed to do too — that we were supposed to look nice, look at the dead body, and then sit down to listen to the nice things that were going to be said about the dead person.
I looked, but then looked away. We all turned away from the casket. We all walked back up to a row of chairs in the front of the viewing room and my father told us to sit down there. They were getting ready to say the nice things about my grandfather.
I’m still surprised about the way I felt when I saw my grandfather’s dead body. My Grandfather Kimball wasn’t somebody that I had any real affection for. I don’t have any nostalgic memories of him. We never played catch or played cards or went fishing. He never pulled any quarters out from behind his ears or had any candy in my pockets. I mostly remember him as somebody to be afraid of, but I don’t think that it was my grandfather who made me feel afraid then.
PART FIVE
How They Touched Her As If She Were Still Alive
I put my hand on her chest over her heart, but I couldn’t feel anything beating inside her anymore and when I leaned my ear down to her I couldn’t hear anything inside of her either. I pulled the blankets down off her body to see if there were anything that I could do for her, but the blood inside her seemed to be draining away from the front of her and down toward her back and into the backs of her legs. It made her face and arms look so pale, but the rest of her turned more purple and more red where the blood started to settle.
Her skin seemed to fall away from her too. It pulled down and showed more of the shape of her face — the flat part of her forehead, the line of her jaw, and the angle of her cheekbones. It showed more of the bones around her collar and her shoulders and down her arms. It seemed to pull her mouth and her eyes open too, but she couldn’t see me or talk.
I pushed her mouth back up and pulled her eyelids back down and held them closed until they stayed shut. Her arms were still a little warm, but her hands felt cold. Her skin was a little wet and then it dried out. The rest of her body heat seemed to be leaving her body too, but I tried to keep her warm. I covered her back up with the blankets and I wrapped myself around her on the couch and held onto her too.
She seemed to feel a little warmer again, but that was probably just the body heat from me warming her skin back up. But then she started to feel colder again and heavy in my arms and it made me feel cold too. The hard smells and the gurgling sounds that were coming out of her made me turn my face away. There wasn’t anything else that I could do to take any kind of care of her anymore.
I called the funeral home to see if they would come over to my home to take care of my wife for me. I told them that I couldn’t keep my wife warm enough anymore. I told them that I couldn’t lift her up off the couch and that her legs buckled too much when I tried to help her get up and that she couldn’t hold onto me with her arms. They told me that maybe I should wait in another room of our house, but I had to arrange her on the couch before they came over to our house to get her.
I put her arms back down at her sides. I straightened her nightgown out and pulled the blankets back up to her neck. I brushed her hair out with her hairbrush and put her lipstick on her lips. I brushed some powder on her forehead and on her chin and on her nose. I brushed some color onto her cheeks for her.
I heard the van from the funeral home drive up in front of our house and then I heard them turn the engine off so that I couldn’t hear it anymore. They walked up the front walk and they knocked on the front door with a soft knock. They came through the front door and into the living room with their metal gurney. They were going to take my wife away from me and our house and with them to their funeral home.