I had never been to a funeral before.
I was 5 years old and standing in my babysitter’s kitchen when I found out my mother’s father died. I don’t know if this is when my mom found out, or if it was when I was being dropped off so my mother could go to the funeral without me, most likely also without my dad. I get the feeling it was the latter, as I have a memory of being asked if I knew why my mom was sad while I was sat on a staircase petting my babysitter’s cocker spaniel, Buffy.
I don’t remember being sad, just upset that my mom was sad. I didn’t know much about my grandfather. He had been in the Air Force in World War II and married my grandmother two weeks after Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sex and babies are a healthy, grounding thing in response to the violent trauma of war, I suppose. It makes people feel normal and in control in a world full of chaos.
While I never got to the point of having candid discussions about anything with my grandfather, he seemed to like me well enough. He bought me a classic car Power Wheels for my 3rd birthday, and one time we went to Sesame Place. I had no other grandfathers to compare him to, as my dad’s dad was also dead, but I would say these actions indicate solid grandparenting. My mom was her parents’ only child, and her mother had died before I was born, so she was hit hard by her father’s death. To be left in the world with no one but your abusive husband and your small child couldn’t have felt great.
It made sense that my mom would keep as much pain from me as she could, though older me thinks I might have preferred the truth a little sooner. But there was no grieving process or witnessing of anyone else’s back then for me. Grandpa was just gone.
Having dealt with the dead deer, dad reappeared at the house sometime after my boyfriend and his parents showed up in response to my phone call. I had immediately retreated up to my bedroom with my boyfriend and didn’t see him come in, so I can only imagine a hilarious scenario where my dad stumbles in the front door with blood all over his hands to discover people in his living room who had just responded to a hysterical phone call from a teenage girl about a dead mom.
Either minutes or hours later (I have no concept of how long I sat in my room that night) a friend of the family who I hadn’t seen for years sat down next to me on the bed. She was a middle-aged woman named Katie (who for some reason in my memory is cast as Katie Sagal, and that is why her name is Katie in this story) whose husband was hunting/drinking buddies with my dad. They had lived right up the street for most of my childhood and I had spent a lot of time at their house when I was really young. I played my first video game on their son’s Atari and they had those Christmas lights with the bubbles in them that are filled with methylene chloride. And their dad was a drunk, too.
I assume my dad had just started calling phone numbers of anyone he knew, and I guess Katie felt she had enough history with me (or at least my mother, as being the wife of a shitty man is often a bonding experience for women) to come and try to help. I know she told me something about how much my mother loved me (everyone but my dad said this, it was the go-to sentiment) and probably some other stuff she thought was helpful. After this, I don’t ever remember seeing her again.
As a kid, there were often nights that I ended up sleeping on the couch, usually because I was watching TV and my mother was not one to limit my TV watching (or candy eating, or soda drinking…) So one night when I was about seven, Katie was ushered past me on the couch in the dark, back towards the kitchen. There was no door or walls between where I was and where they were, so I overheard enough to tell that this was not a happy surprise visit in the middle of the night. She was crying and upset, and people walked back and forth a few times past me. The voices eventually got quieter/calmer and I drifted back to sleep. Katie wasn’t there when I woke up.
What had happened, I later was told, was that Katie’s husband had gotten drunk (like most nights in a lot of homes) and pulled a knife on her in their kitchen. She managed to escape, and either drove or ran to our house for help. Her two teenage children were still in the house, and my dad was recruited to go to their house and assess the situation. I don’t have any memories of anyone calling the police, yet we called animal control at least once for rabid raccoons, and I feel like those are less dangerous than drunken men with knives.
Other people were in and out of the house, some probably checking on me while I cried or slept, which were the only two things I could really do. I maybe managed to make a cup of tea at one point. But a day or two later I was told to clean myself up and get in the car because we had to go to the funeral home and discuss the details of the funeral.
My dad had since picked up my mother’s Rav4 from the parking lot where she died, and that’s what we took to the funeral home. We met some other people there, and my dad and I were escorted into the coffin showroom.
Yes, the coffin showroom.
Maybe you’ve seen a coffin showroom depicted in film or TV. Maybe you’ve had the opportunity yourself to hang out in one, either because you, too, have had to oversee the funeral of a loved one, or you know someone who works in a funeral home. If you haven’t, it’s probably what you’d expect from something called a coffin showroom (though I think they use the less morbid term “casket” and either “display” or “selection” room). It is a dimly lit room with no windows, filled with empty coffins. A creepy person in a suit shows them to you like you are choosing a new car or a mattress, but it’s a wooden box for the dead body left behind by someone you cared about. It is excessively creepy. And I feel like of all the things you want to put a child through who just lost a parent, this is not one of them.
If my mother had been around, she never would have let me go to pick out coffins.
After meandering listlessly behind my dad and the coffin salesman as they maneuvered between the corpse crates, we were led past a large fish tank (because why wouldn’t the calming presence of fish in a glass box ease the anxiety of coffin shopping?) into another room with a conference table where we sat down to discuss the funeral.
This was when I found out that my mother was going to be cremated. For one thing, this made being subjected to the coffin showroom seem egregious since she was just going to be incinerated and not buried in a box. For another thing, mom had never said a word about being cremated to me. She had taken me to her parent’s graves, where they were buried, in the ground. So I had no reason to believe that she didn’t want to be buried in the same manner.
This was also when I found out that my father had denied allowing an autopsy. My mother had dropped dead and her death had been ruled “natural causes,” but that was it. There was no actual cause named. And now they were going to burn her body so no one could ever find out.
I raged at the idea that my father was the authority in any situation, the sole arbiter of my lifelong mourning experience. He was taking the last permanent thing I thought I would have – a grave to visit. It had nothing to do with her or her wishes; she was dead and I didn’t care what happened to her corpse. I just wanted there to be something left, somewhere to visit, somewhere near her parents who she loved. But he was going to put her in a vase.
Maybe this was the plan all along, I thought. Maybe my dad had somehow caused my mother’s death. Sure, she had been sick, but…
Okay, she had been sick a lot.
Actually, she’d been in the hospital for tests the day before she died.
Mom was actively trying to find out why she wasn’t well. She was anemic, would lose consciousness, had horrific menstrual cramps, migraines, and a litany of other symptoms. Maybe as many things were wrong with her as were/are wrong with me, and that’s a lot. I’m such a sickyface. But her health always took a backseat to mine, and it took her a while to start caring about herself.
The day before she died, she had a test scheduled at the hospital. It was a scan where they inject you with dye and then take pictures of your insides. And you aren’t supposed to eat anything for 12 hours before or drive yourself. Since I was homeschooled (we’ll get to that later), I was free to be my mom’s ride to the hospital. She drove us there and we parked and found our way to the correct wing. She checked in and we sat in a waiting room while she filled out forms. There was a waiver explaining the risks of the procedure, and she paused at it.
She was worried. Something about it had her worried.
“You don’t have to do it.” I told her. I could tell she was anxious. “There’s other tests, I’m sure. If this is making you uncomfortable, don’t do it.”
Maybe she was feeling crappy from low blood sugar from not eating since the night before. Maybe one of the waivers had some particularly alarming language. My mom wasn’t one to be afraid of doctors; she was taking me to one at least every few weeks for years. But for some reason, this was freaking her out.
I repeated that it wasn’t a big deal if she didn’t want to do it, because she looked like she wanted an out. She seemed to be leaning towards skipping the procedure and collecting her things when a nurse came out and called her name.
“Oh, hi!” The high-pitched tenor of a woman recognizing a fellow woman acquaintance burst forth from the nurse as she and my mother locked gaze. The nurse turned out to be someone she knew from her AlAnon meetings.
My mom told the nurse that she was feeling a little iffy about the test, and the nurse proceeded to calm her nerves and get her to agree to it. Mom genuinely seemed calmed, and I was sent off to occupy myself for an hour while she had the test done.
I went down to the car, killed some time, and eventually drove down the street to the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up a hot chocolate and a chocolate glazed donut. I was just getting through the drive-thru when I got the phone call that mom was finished and ready to go.
Soon she was in the car, this time in the passenger seat.
She made a vague complaint about being hungry and needing to eat soon, as I carefully maneuvered out of the hospital parking lot. I offered her the chocolate donut that was sitting in its paper bag between our seats. Usually she stayed away from extra sugary treats, but this time she thanked me and happily ate the donut as she tried not to critique my driving too much on the way home.
The next day, she was dead.
If she were to have had a reaction to the dye she was injected with, it would most likely have happened instantly. Not 30 hours later. But now I’d never know how she died. And my dad was just allowed to do that. That was it. No autopsy. No grave.
I voiced nearly none of these thoughts and complaints out loud. I quietly brought up that I had never heard my mother mention wanting to be cremated while we were sitting at that conference table debating flowers and music choices, but the adults immediately talked over me. I could tell I was not going to be permitted to make any funeral decisions, and I was really bitter about being forced along through the entire process.
One of my dad’s brothers was diagnosed with cancer when I was 8. The 80’s and 90’s weren’t a great time to have cancer, and he declined quickly. One evening, my mother brought me into the living room to sit on the arm of the couch so she could brush my hair. As she brushed, she asked me a question.
“Ginny, do you know what suicide is?”
“Yes!” I answered, eager to please at that age. “That’s when you kill yourself. Only stupid people kill themselves.”
I was so confident in my correctness. I’m sure that somewhere along the way, I was told that it was stupid to stick your finger in an electric socket or walk on train tracks. These are stupid things that would kill you, and so killing yourself must be something that stupid people do.
This was perhaps not the answer my mother was looking for. I think she just wanted to know how to frame the next part of this exchange which would be, after an extended pause, “Well, your Aunt Lacey committed suicide…”
Aunt Lacey couldn’t take watching Uncle Jamie suffer and die, so she shot herself in the head with the handgun they kept in their apartment in New Jersey. Uncle Jamie gave out to cancer 5 days later.
As my mother told me this, I was sitting 5 feet from a gun case. And this wasn’t some safe with a combination lock and a heavy metal door. This was a wood and glass display case that housed multiple guns of various types. There may have been a lock on it, but if there was, it was useless. A toddler could have punched through that glass if they really wanted to.
I don’t remember ever being told not to touch the guns, though I’m sure I must have been given that talk. Guns, camouflage, the whole hunter culture was forced on me at a young age, but past 5 years old I rejected it. I never liked guns, and certainly never had an urge to touch them. I was what they called a “tomboy” but I wasn’t into guns, or gross things, and certainly not dead animals. I loved animals. I consider it a large stroke of luck that having a multitude of guns in a household with a mentally ill drug addict and a small child did not result in disaster.
I didn’t attend either Aunt Lacey or Uncle Jamie’s funerals, either. I assume that Aunt Lacey’s was closed casket.
My mom’s body was laid out a day or two before the funeral proper so close family and whoever could come and talk to it for a bit. I don’t know what religion or culture this is from, besides vaguely Christian. We were technically Baptist I guess, but we weren’t religious past a vague, superstitious belief in God, and even mom had finally given up going to church. There were 3 other kids in my Sunday School class when I was younger and we just went out for donuts, mostly. So whatever made it normal to have your mom’s corpse in a box on display so you can talk to it privately – I declare it to be goddamn creepy. I thought it was creepy then, and I think it’s creepy now. Stop doing this.
I was dragged to the funeral home again, and not for the last time. I got as far as sitting outside of the room where she was lying in the box, but I did not go inside. I had nothing to say to the chemical-filled corpse that once housed my mother and was soon to be incinerated, and I refused to have a memory of my mother’s dead face living in my head forever. And it turns out my instincts were 100% correct on this, as I’ve since become familiar with several other people who have had to be in a room with a dead body and it was reported back that it was not a pleasant experience that they would wish to repeat.
I very much got why mom hadn’t taken me to a funeral before.
Mom had died at the end of October and we had to avoid not holding the funeral on Halloween, which just added an extra surreal sheen to the entire situation. I guess it was good that we lived back in the woods where trick-or-treaters wouldn’t be bothering us for candy. I drove myself to the service in my VW Rabbit, passing yard decorations of grim reapers and ghosts on the way.
A lot of people came to my mother’s funeral. I don’t know the number, but it was a really big room they filled up. I stood by the main entrance to the building while people started to arrive, trying to remain inconspicuous but not rude. A lot of people recognized me that I didn’t know. Teachers and friends of my mother I hadn’t seen since I was younger, friends from AlAnon, former students and parents of students, all with the same story to tell me.
“Your mother loved you so much.”
“You are all she ever talked about.”
“She cared about you more than anything.”
I nodded. I politely smiled. I gave hugs when they wanted. I said thank you.
I just wanted it to be over. I don’t know what is helpful or healing about a bunch of adults being polite and sad at you. People grieve at you, not with you. I was putting myself on display for some weird grieving ritual that I was not able to participate in, because my entire life had just been thrown into the trash, and I wasn’t interested in listening to a bunch of people talk about my mom like they cared about her or me. I would never see any of these people again.
I was supposed to sit in the front row directly in front of the casket, but I stuck to my “no looking at dead moms” rule and stood outside the door in the back. Enough people were blocking my view of the body, and no one would be looking at me. I was burning with rage and fear on the inside, but I was somehow also numb enough to go along with what people told me to do. Because what else can you do?
After the service there was a meal at some place with some people. I spent as much time there as I needed to, not really attempting to eat. I don’t eat when I’m depressed (or anxious, or even the least bit ill in any way). I escaped and went home to have sex with my boyfriend, still in my black dress. That was the only normal thing I had left.