The Viewing
Every day is a new day...
Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today
To get through this thing called life
Electric word life it means forever and that's a mighty long time...
Getting through tonight means being in a dimly lit room with beige walls and wooden furniture. There are live plans sprouting in the corners, tended by some service that no doubt comes weekly to make sure they are watered, fertilized and dusted.
The 2 dozen seats ranging in comfort levels between austere bench to proper dining chair and plush couch are filled with supporters, most of whom seem to be in my father-in-law's peer group. One foot on a banana peel and all. We are not early, but not particularly late for this scheduled formal viewing (6-8pm). The ancient crowd already seated no doubt arrived 15m early instead of the fashionably late 15m after. Is a funerary viewing the place for fashionable tardiness? With my wife, EVERYTHING is appropriate to be late for. Including her father's funeral events.
Earlier in the day, I heard her mother ask, 'You're not wearing THAT, are you?!' commenting on the jeans, colorful blouse and sparkly pink ball cap my wife had donned for a spanish-language translation session for the obituary and a run to the printer. 'Make SURE you wear some makeup!' She punctuated the commentary.
My doll of a wife just laughs off the sharp statements. Especially the makeup one. She IS wearing make-up... just a very subtle application. I suspect her mother may be jealous of my wife's delicious skin that allowed her to live well into her fifties without needing any paint. At 65, I have to admit, it does brighten up her face, but it's hardly required to go in public.
In any case, she has heeded the call for decorum and dressed in a smart pair of black slacks with very fine pin stripes and a wonderful flowing blouse that has bold black and white swirls. First glance told me they didn't match, but after giving it a good look, it's a nice matching contrast. She decided to not opt for the hat. She looks very smart.
The room, ringed by elderly friends, leaves ample empty space in the center. So, I decide standing conspicuously in the middle of the room will confront that unease of being in front of people. It's a similar feeling to public speaking. Fear of man. It's a good choice—new arrivals have to approach someone, and having someone standing in the middle provides a natural anchor. It's far less awkward introducing yourself to a standing person over a shy corner-dweller in any case.
My nephew is here before me. SLBY the boy. I've never made it clear, but his wife has the same name as he, hence the 'the boy' and 'the girl' monikers. He is very sad, I can tell. I compliment his VERY handsome-looking cardigan. Since shaving off his rat-tail and cleaning up his hideously sketchy beard, he appears quite dashing. The sweater gives him an almost scholarly quality. This is dashed when, upon complementation, he stands and turns to show me 'Harley Davidson' emblazoned boldly across the entire back. On brand for my redneck kin.
The crowd is picking up now that we are about an hour in. The early adopters aren't leaving. The room will grow crowded to capacity and people will spill out into the adjacent hallways. The many bodies pressed together are making it uncomfortably warm. My mother-in-law is relishing in this, I know. Not just that she enjoys the attention, but that it is a true sign of respect for so large a crowd to come all this way to see a corpse and say 'I love you'.
I spot a family of old friends who I haven't seen in a decade. The father of the family, my brother-in-laws dad and a peer of my dead father-in-law is looking very frail and brittle. He now walks with a cane. His three daughters trail him. The oldest, once a very close friend now looks aged in her late 40's and sporting neon pink hair that spills in coils and roles off of her shoulders and own her back. It is a topic of conversation for me. She wears it his way all the time. Though sometimes blue or purple. She confesses she is starting to think about dropping it due to the cost and damage to her aging mane. We laugh about the old days when she was married to my dear friend. We lost touch after they divorced and he moved to Michigan and she ran away with a truck driver.
Her sisters were closer to my own to younger siblings. The three of us lament my own younger sister's situation (brain damaged after a failed attempt to murder her). The youngest, CV, gave me a TERRIFIC hug. Long and firm. So few people really hug. They are usually polite engagements. Once a friend hugged me so hard and long I wept. She just kept holding on and holding on. It was amazing. Hugs are such good therapy. I make it a point to hug my wife at least once a day, long and firm.
The youngest, SV, kind of brushes me off. Not sure if there's beef there, or just circumstantial. I see an adult woman following her around... the daughter I only knew when she was an infant? Good lord, now long has it been since I've seen these people?
More hellos and muddled spanish greetings. I makeup in enthusiasm what I lack in skill when it comes to foreign language.
My wife's dad looks like he is asleep. We saw him sleep nearly all the time the last 3 months. Someone has pinned a small copper pin on his lapel. It's a nice touch. My mother-in-law reaching in to adjust his shirt sleeves. She comments that 'He wanted to have a viewing... but he wouldn't like all these people staring at him.' She means it with humor, and I understand. He was a deeply private man, but here he is utterly defenseless under the scrutiny of all.
He has a gorgeous red-rose arrangement splashed across the casket. It smells wonderful and I imagine is doing its job to mask the chemistry of death. I wonder how my wife senses it. She has an incredible olfactory sense but makes no comment. Emotion maybe dulls the usual superpower.
Seeing him in this state is bringing back the other opportunities that I have had to experience the presence of a dead body.
I had a sudden sensation of the last viewing I attended about 10 years ago. It was for my younger cousin. He suicided when in his early 40's. I recall his body looking puffy and almost stuffed. Probably because he had put on weight and I remembered him as a very thin young man, like his father. The makeup artist had over-powdered him, but his hair was immaculate. He had long thick locks brushed out straight and feathered slightly. The perfect coif.
I remember his body looking odd with a dress shirt and tie buttoned un-naturally high. He was not a christian and never went to church, so I recall it just being strange seeing him a dress shirt and tie. But, as I am relating the story to a friend, I have a lightning bolt of memory that it wasn't a dress shirt and tie, but a red silk cravat. He had hung himself...
Our brains do amazing things to protect us from reality. It guilds our memory in the best possible light. Psychologists have done a lot of study on how the mind constructs fantasies to protect us from reality. Wrapping us in a protective clothe as it were. It's like that episode of MASH where Hawkeye is having PTSD at having almost been caught with a busload of South Koreans and one of the mother's chokes a chicken to death to keep it from squawking and going them away to the enemy patrol. During therapy he realizes the chicken was actually a baby.
I have another appointment tonight, so must take my leave as the crowd is at its thickest and we say our farewells. Many we will see tomorrow at the burial. Some we will never see again. How strange to reach that point in life when just a few years can wipe out whole families.
The drive out is absolutely gorgeous. Today's rain has brought the world back to life. A contrast to the death we've been confronting lately. The hillsides have sprouted the long wheat-like stems that make seas of grass and it waves gently in the evening breeze. This is one of the most beautiful things in life, this waving grass. I always imagine I could sail gently away in a canoe.
The grassy seas are punctuated with big purple-blue islands of bluebonnets. In the coming days, a common sight will be whole families traipsing around through the beautiful little blue flowers to have their portraits taken.
What joy this all is. It is so true that beauty is all around us, we just have to lift our heads up and see.
Brother Rogers Nelson was right, life is an electric word. Death and loss are difficult, draining burdens to bear. Just when we're feeling drained, we plug in to the exquisiteness of nature and it charges us.
Let it be me
That drops—
The poet
,
The artist
Needs the cut
So deep
So we'll
Bleed
A magnum opus
Or two
But maybe, just maybe that cut that lets in so much energy and light can be salved with the outpouring of love we saw tonight. And no doubt will again in the coming days.
Time is up. I should go. There is still a funeral to prepare.
#essay #death #memoir #100DaysToOffload #Writing
WolfCast Home Page – Listen, follow, subscribe
Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
— Go back home and read MORE by Wolf Inwool
— Visit the archive
I welcome feedback at my inbox
