August 29th is my late father’s birthday, ironically, the same as Michael Jackson’s. I read today that his family’s long-publicized plans to bury the King of Pop on his birthday have been postponed, further keeping my father’s birthday in the news. It was actually news to me that Jackson is still above ground; I thought he’d been buried weeks ago. Being Jewish and of the tradition that bodies are interred immediately if not sooner, I can’t imagine what’s holding things up. Tutankhamen went underground faster than this, and he took a trainload of swag with him and maybe even some guests. My advice to the Jackson clan would be, “Focus, people, focus.”
I know that in the depths of grief (and merchandising deals) people don’t always act with clarity or speed. There’s a lot to deal with at the end of a loved one’s life when you’re in charge. I got a crash course in death plan management several years ago when both my parents and maternal grandmother died within weeks of each other. It was dreadful and shocking, and no amount of prior planning could have prepared me for such an upheaval.
Husband and I hadn’t been married very long when my spunky, 90-something grandmother sat us down to go over her final wishes. She said flat out she wanted to be cremated and was unimpressed that Jewish law mandated otherwise. She said she was always too busy in her life to pay attention to rules like that. I asked her what she’d like done with her ashes and she said, “Who cares? I’ll be dead.” Husband blanched a little at her bluntness, but I expected nothing less.
I said, “How about this, Grandma: we keep you in the trunk of the car in case we ever get stuck in the snow.” Most of the color drained out of Husband’s face. My grandmother laughed with her whole body and replied, “Perfect! At least then I’ll be of some use.” Grandma and I continued to yuk it up while Husband sat there looking at us like maybe he’d married into the Addams Family.
I really felt like the Addams Family in January of 2004 when my mom died suddenly while we were waiting for terminal illnesses to claim my father and grandmother. My brother and I had sat down with a funeral director the month before, sadly making arrangements for our dad’s funeral, which seemed imminent. When we returned a few weeks later, the undertaker somberly ushered us into his office and offered his condolences on the passing of our parent.
He pulled out a folder with our family name on it, and said we were very wise to have made all the arrangements in advance, as things have a way of happening unexpectedly. Then he asked where he could pick up our father. We looked at each other and said, no, our mother. He looked at the folder and said, no, your father. We kept going back and forth like Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson in Chinatown with “My sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter” until my brother and I got so frustrated and overwhelmed that we started to laugh.
What began as a startled chuckle quickly mushroomed into the kind of laughter you can’t control, no matter how inappropriate, like when the whole class is silent, or the hushed echo in church sends it out to the heavens, and the harder you try and stop it, the more it needs to come out. The funeral director jumped up from his seat and rushed to close the door to his office. Maybe he was afraid we’d wake the dead.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos present Things To Wonder About
cereal killers
frogs
delusions of modesty
that eye of the beholder thing about beauty
