Influenced by the recent death of several older relatives, my mother began reflecting upon her own mortality. This, and a conversation with the office manager of her church about burial plots, inspired my mother to drag me to a funeral home while we were out running errands - all under the guise of "picking up a brochure." I should've known something was amiss when she went from one building to another, paper in hand, and didn't come out for 15 minutes, and only then to tell me to come in.
Normally, I don't want anything to do with hospitals, funeral homes, or mortuaries, unless dragged there by guilt and my affection for the deceased. Had I known what was happening, I may have just stayed in my car. Alas, I did not, and I was lulled into a sense of calm by the trophy and award store signage on the front of the red brick building.
As I walked up the path to the building, I noticed that there were headstone and grave marker samples laid in the front lawn. "Curious," I thought to myself, but continued into the abyss, blissfully unaware of what was to come. Inside, I was greeted by green carpet popular in the late '70s and early '80s -worn, but clean and cared for - and slatwalls filled with urns and headstone vases, while large headstone templates of varying colors and materials bore different fictitious (I hoped) names, yet oddly the same portraits. My mother sat in a small room around a round wood veneer table with an older blonde woman, whose graceful, moderately wrinkled face still conveyed the exceptional beauty she must have been as a young woman, and a rotund and raucous silver-haired man with deep set, hooded blue eyes whose age was impossible to tell, as it is with all life-long smokers, but who I guessed was somewhere between 65 and 78.
I sat quietly in the corner, trying to blend in with the wall, realizing at last that I had been deceived. The blonde woman was filling out paperwork as her boss, the raucous man, looked on and corrected her mistakes in a tone that conveyed both exasperation and amusement. "You've got to learn this," he said in a heavy Southern drawl. "No, no. You put her name HERE, not THERE." I tried to remain as still as possible, hoping everyone would forget I was in the room, intrigued by the intricacies of a few of the headstones, while repulsed by the atmosphere of decay implied by the wares. Unfortunately, my mother kept trying to involve me in the conversation, as if somehow being included in the process would put me at ease. I tried to show my disinterest by answering in monosyllabic replies and head nods, but she did not grasp my meaning.
Whenever her boss left the room, the blonde woman would chit chat with my mother as she filled out paperwork. She tells my mom how, sadly, she lost her husband "just like that" one day, and how arranging your burial plans early is something that was done in the '50s, after "the house, the car, and the honeymoon. People just don't do that anymore." I thought about this for a moment, and the idea of getting "his & hers" graveyard plots for each other as newlyweds seemed both bizarre and macabre. (Who am I kidding...this whole experience was macabre.)
After about 20-30 minutes, the last of the paperwork was filled out, and I thought, "YES! I can finally leave," but no. Somehow, I was dragged into a conversation between Raucous Southerner and my mother about how my mother doesn't look her age - a remark we hear all the time, as neither of my parents look as old as they are. I must have laughed quietly, because RS looks at me and says, "Well, honey, don't you jus' have the NICEST [only he dragged out the first syllable, so it became 'NYYYYE-cest'], most beautiful smiiiile." (I find that older men like to say this to young women a lot...a nice, nonthreatening, nonsexual way to give us a compliment.) Then, of course, he had to ask me my age (again, something socially acceptable only to old men). When I responded, he made a HUGE deal about how I look much, much younger than I am, to which my mother responded by basically giving the man our family history.
Fast forward another 10-15 minutes, and RS begins telling us how mortuaries make him uncomfortable, which is why he sticks to the headstone/plot part of it. (I suppose it's mildly less creepy.) He begins telling us this story about a humpback from Georgia who died: the mortician couldn't figure out how to prevent the deceased from sitting up in the coffin, but finally came up with using a rubber strap. This was back in the day when you had the wake for your late family member in your house and stayed up all night, which is critical for the joke. So 3 or 4 of the family members stay up, then gradually get up and go to bed. Finally, only one of the relatives is still awake and with the coffin, when the strap breaks and the corpse sits up and says, "Well, if you're going to stay up, I guess I'll go to bed too." Funniest joke ever, right?? WRONG. As if I'm not already freaked out by this entire experience in mortality, I now have to picture a zombie coming out of its coffin?? No thank you.
I quickly gathered my things and started heading toward the door, thankful that this entire experience was at last over. I was free to go back to the land of the living, a world that does not involve the repose of human remains.
What did I learn from this foray into funeral planning? First, that those involved in this field have completely warped, macabre senses of humor. Secondly, that I'm never being duped into "just getting a brochure" with my mother ever again. Thirdly, don't trust so-called trophy and award stores, as they're just fronts for morticians and funeral plot salesmen. Get your kid something else for finishing first in her soccer league, like a cookie...or a pony.
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