The Mississippi on her Knees Chapter Six

Mr. Lee made an appointment for us at the funeral home a full week later. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a glass shelf of crosses and knickknacks. And then we were directed down a hallway to a very chilly room across the hall from a mock coffee shop sort of reception set up. The very first thing I saw in the meeting room was a large, framed print of Nottoway Plantation and that actually comforted me. It made me think of touring the mansion with my best friend Laura right after she’d turned teenaged, and of photos of me and Grace taken on the grounds, of the picture of Mom and Dad on the front steps, back when they were first engaged. This wouldn’t be so scary. How could it be? We sat down at the conference table and Will got up to get coffee and we waited for Mr. Lee to show up.

When he and Ms. Jan arrived, we got down to business. We talked about plots versus mausoleums, obituaries and flowers and limos and visitation and burials and I nodded all the while. It was surprisingly easy for me to comprehend what was being said and decided. It should have been harder to make out. Hazier, less concrete. It should have been just as confusing as it was when Dad first got sick. The ending was so much easier to plan than the beginning. And I remember thinking when the funeral director pulled out a pricing sheet that it looked curiously similar to one I had recently filled out myself: for Lafayette High graduation invitations and a Kelly green robe and tassel. And when we sat down in that funeral parlor, it was all about the task at hand. It had to be done and it had to be discussed and it had to be finalized and for some godforsaken reason, Will and Grace and I had to express our opinions. I noticed Will’s sharp intake of breath and his shaking hands and his stooped posture and I knew that it wasn’t so easy for him to wrap his mind around.

The hard thing about it was that it wasn’t hard for me. At all. It was exactly like any other social function I’d ever planned. Picking out a program design had as much emotion attached to it as choosing a birthday cake. The me that was in the funeral home was way too businesslike to be discussing and imagining the end of her father’s life.

We were in that same room with the soothing, welcoming representation of Nottoway when I felt my first twinge of emotion. It came on suddenly with the words, “ eighteen gauge steel.” The funeral representative was, of course, talking about the casket. He spoke of the variations as if he were a car salesman discussing different Toyotas. This was a business transaction just like any other. We were preparing ourselves, steeling ourselves to go into the casket room where we would see all sorts of models that were available. And with those words, I got this image of stuffing my dad—my sweet, wonderful dad—into a rusty metal box and dropping him in the dirt and his eyes flying open and him yelling and dirt falling on the casket and it buckling under the weight. It was like a snippet of someone else’s terrible nightmare.

When we walked into the casket room there was an instant contrast in temperature: the heat was edging toward uncomfortable. There were caskets all around, about fifty different ones. Our representative had to run out to get something…who knows what? We were alone in there with Mr. Lee and Ms. Jan. Mom started talking about how she didn’t care about the casket and Dad didn’t care about the casket and she asked Will and Grace outright if they cared about the casket. Will looked like he about to lose his hamburger all over the nearest cushy, cream-colored interior and Grace said she didn’t. But I realized in that room that I did. And if Mom had asked me outright, I wouldn’t have been able to lie to her. It suddenly seemed very important to me that Dad not just be put in the lowest priced economy steel tin for eternity. My dad deserved more. But I was paralyzed by the effort that using my voice would require. My choice of a wooden casket was five thousand dollars and we picked the lowest priced economy model in the end. In a whirlwind. There was the sense of an effort to keep the price down and get out of there as fast as humanly possible pervading the mood of the crowd in the room.

And we did get out of there as quickly as we could. After the casket selection, we went to peek in one of the visitation parlors. It was nice, of course, in that eery pepto-bismol way that funeral parlors try too hard to not be utterly depressing. We previewed the spot where the casket would be set up and we would get to see our dad’s face for the last time ever.

And then we left. We stood in the parking lot and Mom cried on Mr. Lee’s shoulder and we just kind twiddled our thumbs until the fit and the corresponding cries of, “I never thought he would die young,“ subsided and we got into the car and drove right to the cemetery down the road to take a self-guided motor tour.

We came home, eventually, and Daddy wanted the update. He asked to hear it so we laid it out for him. We told him everything we learned about how his death would be marked and the price and all the logistics. And then he asked if there was anything else we wanted to say and Will said, “I love you. And I hate having to think about when I’ll have to say goodbye to you.” And Grace lost it. And then Mom lost it. And there we were, all five of us on Mom and Dad’s bed and Dad said, “I love you too. I have a wonderful, beautiful family and that will be my everlasting legacy. And we all know that we‘ll see each other again in the hereafter.” And we all lost it. And then mom started saying something and Dad corrected her and she swiped at her eyes and implored, “You see? Who’s gonna correct me when I remember wrong?” and that added a good five minutes to the crying.

Grace and I left shortly after that to go shopping for visitation clothes and funeral dresses. It was strange shopping for such specific clothing. Clothes that we would forever associate with the death of our father. Clothes we wouldn’t want to wear more than once. We walked around Old Navy, picking up every black piece of clothing we could find. And we kept mentioning “a funeral.“ Not Dad’s funeral. In the end, we found matching dresses at Ross Dress for Less. They were 25 dollars. Keep the price down. And get out of there as fast as humanly possible.