The Burial

The Burial

I always called her Mother. With a sharp, pointy capital “M” to match her sharp and pointy personality. There was nothing soft about her … she was not a mom, mama or mommy. Always Mother. Always with a capital M.

At her funeral people came up to me and said, “We knew your Mother, but for some reason we liked her anyway.” I’m glad she had people who liked her, because I surely didn’t. Her death was a relief for both of us I think. She was sick for a long time … really her whole life. Mother liked being sick. It gave her something to do and made her the center of attention. I say I didn’t like her, but I did love her. I think that’s the law or something … you have to love your Mother, even if you don’t like her. My brother, Rob, on the other hand, loved her and probably secretly liked her. He was devastated by her death. Mother’s relationships with men were weird like that.

To give you an example of how she treated people, one time a lady in her bookclub lost her husband. He didn’t wander off … he died. So, Mother baked a cake and called the lady to come get it. She was royally pissed when the lady told Mother it would be nice if she delivered it to her since she was a little busy. Mother said, “Well, I just told her I’d baked the damn thing, what more did she want? So, I put it in the freezer and I’ll eat it later.” Yep, that was my Mother.

Before she died, she’d made it abundantly clear that she had no desire to be buried next to my dad, her husband of some 40 plus years. At that time, Dad had been dead for more than a decade. When we picked out his plot, Mother said, “Just pick one, I won’t be there with him. I’m going to be cremated and then buried next to my Daddy.” I always thought that was a sad, creepy, thing to say.

Dad was the warm, caring parent. He was also an alcoholic, but then who wouldn’t be living with my Mother. One time I had a psychic tell me that my Dad died because he thought it was the only honorable way to leave my Mother. Did I mention that he died at home and Mother forgot to call and tell me? She did call my husband and left a voice mail that someone died, but didn’t say who. He called and asked me who died, but of course I didn’t know yet. She did call my brother right away, but like I said, her relationships with men were weird.

But, I digress.

Mother died of complications from a liver transplant she’d had within a year of my dad’s death. She lived for another nine years but near the end she was so mean and non-compliant that dozens of doctors had fired her as a patient. We spent a lot of time going to the emergency room and we always played musical hospitals in the hopes we could find a doctor that hadn’t fired her yet and would actually treat her. She had a full-time care-giver and a son who loved her (and secretly liked her) but I was always the one who drew emergency room duty. It was a very long 8 months from the beginning of her decline to her death.

The morning I drove over to pull the plug (by myself of course …”Oh, sister, I just can’t face doing that.”) it was sunny and hot. For more than a week, the newscasters had been frying eggs on the sidewalk and baking cookies on car dashboards. I dropped my son off at school and headed over to the hospital. I figured I could do this dastardly deed and be back at the office by noon.

The doctor met me outside her room in the ICU to discuss the plan and lead me through the process. First, they would turn off her pacemaker and then unplug her from the respirator. My first irreverent thought was “Damn, who knew she came with a remote control?” As I stood by the side of the bed waiting for the doctor to find the remote, the curtain flew back and in rushed the hospital priest. Without asking permission he began giving my Mother last rites. Now, not only wasn’t my Mother Catholic (God forbid) she wasn’t even terribly religious. She believed in God, I guess, because every time the Mormon boys would come to the door asking if she was “born again”, her answer was always, “No, I got it right the first time.”

So the priest starts in on his litany of prayers. There’s one that’s called The Office at the Parting of the Soul from the Body When a Man has Suffered for a Long Time and I suspect that’s the one he used because it took a looong time. Seriously. It reminded me of the begat chapters in the bible … on and on and on. So much so that I got the giggles. In my mind I could hear Mother saying, ‘Just get the hell on with it, okay?” and the more I thought about it the more tickled I became. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to laugh out loud but dammit, I couldn’t help it. Trying to hold it in made me vibrate and snort and earn dirty looks from the priest.

Eventually he finished commending her soul to God and the doctor found the remote. Turn off, unplug, wait. And wait. And wait some more. She always was a stubborn old bitch and she just wouldn’t die. It took her 18 hours to, as they say, kick off this mortal coil. I was home in bed when they called me. I do have some regret that I couldn’t wait but she was taking her sweet-assed time and I was a single parent with a kid to care for.

So the next day we (by “we” I mean “I”) faced the funeral director. Imagine a funeral director that looked like Chevy Chase doing shtick on Saturday Night Live. With wringing hands, a black wig and bushy black eyebrows that waggled when he talked. As I mentioned, Mother wanted to be cremated and then buried next to her Daddy in Kansas. Couldn’t do just one thing or the other … nope, it had to be both. So, the first thing to do was sign the paperwork to remove her pacemaker. Who knew it would explode in the fire? Then, even though you’re gonna burn, you have to do it in a $3,000 casket. So, at the end of the day all those ashes in the baggie … yep, they’re part Mother and part coffin. And then you get to pick out the urn to put that baggie in. It’s uncouth, I gather, to take Mother home in a ziplock tucked inside Tupperware. I guess you really never know if the ashes you get back are of your loved one (or not so loved one in this case). It took two weeks to burn, churn and return her to us. (By “us” I mean “me”). Just in time for the road trip to Kansas. We’d had the funeral with an empty urn and without the guest of honor.

I’d called Mother’s next of kin (my second cousins) when she died. Not only to let them know the news, but to also let them know she’d be taking up space in the DePoe family plot in the Lone Elm cemetery next to her Daddy. The cemetery contained not only the remains of my grandparents but their grandparents and everyone in between. My three cousins and their children and grandchildren—all thirty-eight of them—lived within 2 miles of the old family farm. The eldest, LaNelle, and her husband Gerald (pronounced with a hard “G”) invited my brother, my son and I to stay with them which seemed like a good idea since Lone Elm didn’t offer any other sleeping arrangements. Despite the reason, they were over-the-moon excited to entertain us. It had been 35 years since I’d seen them and most of them I’d never even met.

My brother, my thirteen-year old son, Jason, and I arrived Friday mid-afternoon with plans to stay the weekend. Mother’s interment would be Saturday at noon followed by a pot-luck luncheon at the town hall. We pulled up to the small clapboard farmhouse and before we could get out of the car, LaNelle and Gerald, plus several other people I didn’t know, were running down the driveway to meet us. Hugs, tears, laughter, and everyone talking at once. As a child I had dreams that this was how families were supposed to act. Who knew it could be my family too?

We left Mother in her urn on the back floorboard of the car while we headed to the house and fended off offers of food, water, soda, a bathroom, a nap … anything we wanted. I’ve never felt so at home with people who were strangers to me. We walked in the back door of their house, straight into the kitchen. Worn linoleum sat under a huge breakfast table with a lazy susan hub. The dishes stacked on the drainboard spoke volumes about good food, good times and love. More than 100 teakettles of all shapes and sizes kept watch from a shelf near the ceiling. For the first time in a very long time, I took a deep breath.

LaNelle and Gerald decided that I should sleep in their bed in the master bedroom. “Honey, we’ve already moved all our stuff up to the attic. We do it all the time and besides that way your son will have someone up there with him so it won’t be scary. Your brother can sleep on the pull-out sofa in the living room.” From the corner of my eye I saw Rob roll his eyes.

Gerald pulled me aside and said, “We want to show you our new prized possession. We know your Daddy was an artist and we just bought a new painting. We can’t wait to show you. We’ve hung it in the bedroom over the dresser. Let’s go look, okay?”

“Of course,” I said sincerely. “I would love to see your new painting.” Now, I’m seldom speechless, especially when I’m around someone who’s being so nice to me. I mean, I can carry on a conversation with just about anyone. But, I swear to God when I saw their new painting, my brain just shut down. I couldn’t anymore come up with words than pigs can fly. A giant naked Janet Jackson. On velvet. One humongous boob pointing its nipple at me like a taser.

“Wow.”

“I know, isn’t it something else? We just love it and are so proud that we were able to get it.”

“Yeah, wow. It really is something else.”

I knew right then that as much as these folks were warm and inviting, as much as they seemed to be really caring and loving … it was gonna be a long weekend. And I had to spend two nights looking at Janet Jackson’s velvet boob staring back at me.

The sidewalks in downtown Lone Elm start rolling up around 7:00 on Friday nights. But the Chinese buffet stays open until 8:00 making it the go-to destination for anyone wanting to eat out past 4:30 or 5:00. They don’t even have a Dairy Queen or Tastee Freeze. Fifteen of us packed onto one long table next to the buffet which offered about 30 different dishes. I assume they were different but they all looked suspiciously similar. As a bonus they had both banana pudding and mandarin oranges for dessert.

As much as everyone wanted to stay up and talk after dinner, this was a working farm and the alarm was set for 4:30. In the morning. My son was excited because Gerald was going to let him feed the bull and drive the tractor. Whoo boy, how much fun is that for a thirteen year old boy? Getting him to bed at 8:30 wasn’t so hard with that dangling carrot, but shutting down my brain was a little harder. And my brother decided that he’d been kidnapped by aliens and wanted to know how far he’d have to drive to find a nightclub. Pre-cell phone surfing, his only option was to read a book. Whoo boy, how much fun is that for a 38 year old single man on a Friday night?

After a breakfast that consisted of steak, eggs, fried potatoes, three loaves of bread toasted, home-churned butter, home-made peach preserves, and the same 15 people from the night before, it was time to get ready for the interment. We retrieved Mother from the back-seat floorboard and headed over to the town hall to drag out tables and chairs for the pot-luck. That’s where we met up with the minister who was going to say a few words over Mother’s baggie before we popped it into the ground. He wanted to talk, but really, what could I say to him? “Glad she’s here and not on my mantle?” Or how about, “My Dad always used to say it was a good day when you were on this side of the grass … I guess Mother’s about to find out what that means?” In the end, I just told him, “We’re just glad she’s in a better place.” I even said it with a straight face.

It was a short walk to the Lone Elm cemetery. It was quite old with a wrought iron fence and lots of tall elaborate headstones adorned with fat, naked cherub babies. You could pick out my grandparents headstones from across the cemetery … they were plain and unadorned. I’m sure they were probably on sale the day Mother picked them out. She was frugal like that. I’m surprised they even had the right names on them.

Her plot was, of course, to the left of her Daddy, my grandfather. I kept thinking that he was stuck in the middle of Mother and my grandmother, trying to keep the two women from fighting for all eternity. It made me feel kind of sorry for him. There was a round hole dug for the urn in the center of the plot. It was a tiny thing, much like someone was getting ready to plant a fence post. I leaned over to slip the urn down the hole and heard it hit bottom. Except the hole was about four inches too short. It looked like a gopher hole with the lid of the urn sticking out. Come to find out, they had used a post-hole digger and it didn’t dig deep enough. We stopped the ceremony long enough for someone to find a shovel so we could dig the hole a tad bit deeper. For some reason, as much as I wanted everything over with as fast as possible, it didn’t seem right to not get her all the way underground.

By this time, I was pretty sure I was losing my sanity. My son was squirming like something had crawled up his pant leg and my brother was leaning over to whisper in my ear, “Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ, can we just get this over with?” every five minutes. The minister was horrified and kept tugging at his collar, clearing his throat and wiping his rather prominent nose with the back of his sleeve. Several of the younger cousins were playing tag and throwing dirt clods at one another. LaNelle and Gerald were patiently taking charge and getting things done.

After the planting, we walked back to the town hall where dozens of people I didn’t know were starting to show up. I lost track of how we were all related: “I’m your Mother’s first cousin’s husband’s sister.” Once again, I heard the familiar refrain, “We didn’t see your Mother very often, and we knew how she could be, but we loved her anyway.” We ate ham, scalloped potatoes, deviled eggs and green jello with little floaty things in it. We broke up fights, dealt with pouty teenagers, picky eaters and judged matchbox car races. We swapped stories and got to know each other just a bit.

In the end, we got Mother in the ground, we got my brother back to what he considered civilization, and I learned what love and family was really all about.