You wouldn’t think there could be much scope for the imagination in funerals, but my large family has had so very many of them that we seem to instinctively put the “fun” back in funeral. It’s possibly an unhealthy coping mechanism of avoidance, but we seem to prefer falling apart over time, like a slow moving train wreck far beyond the initial cause of derailment. Crumbling all at once like a peach dessert just isn’t a viable option when there are speeches to write, hymns to practice, old family scuffles to set aside, and extra tissues to procure. It’s not that we don’t cry. It’s just that an unexpected number of those tears come from laughter.
My cousin Karla and I had the serendipitous fortune of becoming roommates in college. This was made possible, in part, because although I am six years older and we lived in completely different states, I took ten years to finish and we both eventually transferred to the same college. We were poor like most college students, working our way through school and saving to pay for our tuition and books and rent and groceries without much room for extras. (Except for the Penny Words Jar. Somehow there were always enough pennies for that.) So when the devastating news finally reached a concerned Karla why her father was not responding to her letters and phone calls, grief was mingled with distress over what to do next.
It turns out that dying is not cheap, and there is a strong desire to handle the remains of loved ones with great care and ceremony. Somehow this emotional need often translates to thousands of dollars in funeral expenses. Between the two of us, we probably didn’t even have a hundred dollars at our disposal, and most of that needed to go toward the next month’s groceries and rent. But the thought of leaving her father to be buried in a potter’s field was heart wrenching, however financially impractical the other alternatives were at that moment. Some of our loved ones were able to scrape together some additional funds at considerable sacrifice to them, but we are none of us wallowing in silver-spooned wealth, so options were limited.
Ultimately, the manner of his death made cremation the only viable option. This simplified many decisions, but not all of them. His parents had purchased a plot for him next to theirs, but how does one respectfully bury a translucent plastic box of ashes? I was dating a handsome Ukrainian student with hidden woodworking talents. Karla had introduced us, and he spent sufficient time with us at our apartment that he was like family, and knew our situation. He volunteered to make a simple wooden casket, using the dimensions provided by the mortuary. It was basic, but beautiful in its simplicity and made with love. Around the same time, he made a recipe box for me that was quite similar (…smaller…) and I often think of him and the casket he built when I use it. (Which, probably sounds a bit morbid for culinary musings—or a bit irreverent for reflections on a funeral—but whatever. It’s all part of the fabric of life. And death.)
My brother had given me his old Hyundai Sport Coupe (we called it the Scoup) to use at college while he was away on a mission, and while it wasn’t entirely reliable—because I didn’t yet know about timing belts and their expiration dates—we decided to pile in and aim south and hope for the best. I don’t remember most of the ten hour drive, probably because we did what we always do when we’re close enough to talk to each other: ran our mouths non-stop about every thought that had ever made an appearance in our heads. We find ourselves highly entertaining, even in our grief and distress. Uh, maybe especially then. But the one part I do remember is that we inadvertently took a road that detoured us through a National Park. Which was pretty, but also required a substantial payment at the gate we hadn’t planned on. But… it was really pretty, and we decided to focus on that. Because at that point we didn’t have time to backtrack and figure out which road we should have taken instead. Once a funeral is planned, you’re supposed to show up on time, particularly if you’re the one in charge of the remains.
It should be noted that driving was never my favorite sport, and I knew (…know…) very little about cars and how they function. At this point, Karla didn’t have a driver’s license, so I’m reasonably certain that she knew even less than I did. So when we stopped on the side of a mountain behind a line of cars waiting to go through a tunnel under construction, my primary concern was how to not roll backward in the manual transmission vehicle. When said vehicle abruptly shut off and refused to respond in any way to my efforts to restart it, I might have panicked a little. Or a lot. Since I didn’t have any kind of mental checklist of why-this-car-might-be-inexplicably-broken, we just kind of sat there staring at each other, going through a very different checklist: we can’t be late for the funeral, we don’t have time for the car to break down, cars behind us are about to get impatient, we’re in the middle of a hot desert far from any mechanical shop, we have no cell phones (and probably no cell service when it comes to that), and absolutely no clue how to begin to get ourselves off the road and out of the way, much less out of the unplanned predicament.
So we prayed. I mean, we grew up in a religious culture chalk full of stories about people who prayed and were miraculously rescued from all kinds of predicaments, so it wasn’t a real stretch for either of us to get there after about 2.5 seconds of gulping panic. But… this was kind of big. Like, we’d had other prayers answered, so we weren’t new to the concepts of faith and sincerity and how to go about talking to God and asking for His assistance with something so obviously beyond us. But was getting a car on a hill immediately restarted for two clueless girls really on God’s list of acceptable requests for miracles? Maybe the answer would come in some other way, I thought. Some stranger would offer to help and we’d have to hope the stranger was not a mass murderer (or at least that any murdering tendencies had a miraculous change of heart for the duration of our rescue.)
Sometimes I think God heaves a big sigh and waits for the hurricane of thoughts to slow down long enough for Him to get a word in edgewise. This time, I glanced sideways at Karla after the prayer, made sure I was pressing all the right pedals (‘cause it turns out that’s totally a thing), and turned the key. The Scoup started right up, like it hadn’t just turned into a useless heap of scrap metal a few minutes before. I blinked in surprised relief. It worked. We drove forward to get out of the way of the long line of people behind us…and just breathed. I think we might have been quiet for a few moments after that, full of reverent gratitude and the realization that we weren’t exactly left on our own to deal with the overwhelming challenges of life. Somehow, an answer that immediate and unequivocal has spiritual-emotional implications far beyond the immediate inconvenience of a broken car.
The rest of the drive south was relatively uneventful. We eventually made it to our aunt’s house, who graciously opened her home to allow us a comfortable place to rest for the night and fed us.
The next morning we made it to the mortuary, where there was a gallon-sized zippered plastic bag of personal effects that I took possession of, because that was one straw too many for Karla’s emotions on that day. We handed over the empty wooden box, which seemed a bit perplexing to the mortician. You’d think that no one had ever buried ashes in a small wooden casket before. But it turned out that the inside of the wooden box was the exact dimensions of the outside of the plastic container, so that there was absolutely no wiggle room. It was a tight fit. I think something on Karla’s barely-holding-it-together face dissuaded the mortician from making any tactful alternative suggestions. He just made it work, bless him. Like squeezing the deceased into a too-small tuxedo for one final social engagement.
He also gently suggested sealing the casket shut with screws, and Karla tensely agreed. It was a good call. I mean, from the perspective of the sole pall bearer, me. I had only one job at the funeral, and horrific visions of stumbling over an ill-placed lump of grass suddenly passed through my head at his suggestion. Not that it wasn’t a daily occurrence, the stumbling over my own two feet, but the emotional stakes were kind of high to risk such a social gaffe. (I’m sure Miss Manners or Dear Abby could dig up etiquette on the grave importance of not accidentally dumping hallowed ashes out of a casket. Their advice would probably be not to hand over such a solemn responsibility to me in the first place, but sealing the casket would probably meet their approval as an acceptable alternative.) Screwed firmly shut, I was more likely to make an appropriately dignified entrance.
We had an afternoon memorial service with his local friends. Our aunt had arranged to use a room at the nearby church. She played prelude music on the piano as we gathered, and when we sang a hymn I thought might be non-denominationally familiar. I’m not sure that it really was. (My reasoning was that they played “Nearer My God to Thee” on the movie Titanic, so probably everyone knows that song. My memory is fuzzy after so many years, but I think I might have ended up singing a very awkward solo.)
I don’t remember what words were spoken at the memorial service, but I do remember the people who attended were very kind to us. They took us out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant afterward, and shared memories of Karla’s father.
Afterward, we were a little bit antsy to get on the road, because we still had another eight hour drive to reach the cemetery before the graveside service the next morning. But we were hoping to hear from our uncle who also lived in the area. We returned back to our aunt’s house and were finally able to connect. He would be able to meet us later that night. That meant getting a very late start on our drive out of town, but we barely even paused to check with each other before quickly agreeing. We loved our uncle very much, and worried about him often. He’d been one of our favorite playmates when we were little kids, but something had changed after he served in the military, and he didn’t talk or laugh as much as he used to. The playfulness was hidden away under a more serious mood, and he seemed to withdraw from our family more often than he joined us. So driving through the night was a small sacrifice in light of his willingness to meet with us for a few minutes. And it was worth every precious moment we got to spend visiting with him.
As we climbed into the car, with our extra clothes and small casket in the back, Karla asked if we could stop by a Mediterranean restaurant near her old college to get a falafel pita. There was no way I was going to turn down a small side trip to get comfort food. Thankfully they were still open despite the late hour. We headed to the highway out of town, and got stuck in a very, very long traffic jam. Sometimes that happens on a desert road with few lanes. I don’t remember if it was partially closed for construction or a car accident or a wildfire, but our prospects of reaching our destination by morning were narrowing. And we just set aside the stress and did our best.
I look back now, and what really amazes me is that we did it all without cell phones, without gps, without music. We just had a general idea of what direction we needed to go, and a paper map, and an unreliable Scoup. About halfway there, I was too exhausted to continue. It was well after midnight, and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. We stopped at the next major town. We weren’t sure whether people were allowed to sleep in their cars on the side of the road—would the police come and tell us to move along? would criminals come and pull us from the car? We found a pay phone with a phone book, and looked up a local church. We found the address on the map in the back and memorized the route to get there from the pay phone. I felt so relieved as we pulled into the parking lot. It wasn’t at all comfortable to sleep in a seat that didn’t even lean back all the way, and it was a little bit weird sleeping next to a small casket. But we managed about four hours of shut eye before the sun rose, and we got back on the road.
We felt kind of grungy, and hungry, so we stopped at a McDonald’s to grab some breakfast and brush our teeth. We were getting nervous about the time, because we were cutting it really close and still had a ways to go. We eventually made it, and probably would have been on time, but we also decided to stop by a church facility where travelers could take a shower and get cleaned up.
Karla’s dad was officially late for his own funeral… but only by a few minutes. Thankfully, everyone at the grave site was patient. I didn’t trip over grassy tufts or my own feet, so I was as dignified as I could possibly be in wet hair and walking up to the gathered family and friends several minutes late.
There were framed pictures at the grave site. It was my first time seeing his face; I had never met him while he was alive. I was glad we could do our part to honor him at his death. I only know a little about him, but all I really needed to know was that Karla loved her father, and that this unexpected road trip was necessary to put him to rest and give her greater peace of mind.
It was worth every moment.
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