Cessation

When I originally sat down to start writing this, I figured I’d start at the beginning. But, after starting at the beginning and typing for several hours, I discovered that five pages had gone by and I hadn’t even reached the main point of my story. So I’m starting over with a clear head. So here it is (and you’ll be able to tell when I stop editing out all the boring details about the events leading up to the actual story.

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          On Thursday December 11, 2008 at exactly 11:50 am, I found out that my grandfather had died. His actual time of death was somewhere around three in the morning, several hours before my mom got there. My entire day after that was pretty much screwed over. After I got plastered on Friday (no seriously, I got plastered – my friend poured plaster all over me, it was great) I avoided the party downstairs that my sister was throwing to celebrate her friend Megan’s birthday – well, Megan and her twin. I packed my stuff up and finally came out to finish watching Batman with the mass of unknown people at my house. I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been in such a foul and miserable mood. My father said that’s the quietest he’s ever heard thirty teenagers in his entire life (and I have to admit that we were being pretty quiet).
         On Saturday I put my friends wallet in her mailbox because she’d left it in my car and then we spent the day on the road. Between the gas stations, the music, the movies, and the knitting there wasn’t much to do. I didn’t really watch the movies; I just observed their passing and occasionally stared out the window for long periods of time as they played. We stayed in a hotel and were on the road the next day – dressed and ready for the appointment we would just barely make.

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Sunday December 14, 2008: The Viewing

          I’ve been to one funeral in my life, and that was last year over Thanksgiving break with my mom. I hardly knew the guy, and so my attention to the affair was fairly detached. I was quite content to remark upon the flowers, the expressions of those around me, and the reaction my grandmother had to seeing her dead brother. So far, the experience of funerals is freezing weather and snow, icy roads and sleet, freezing rain and chai tea lattés from Starbucks.
          But at the viewing I sat down in a chair I the front row and watched people form a line to see my grandfathers body and offer their condolences. I recognized very few people, and got touched more than I would have liked. The majority of my energy was focused on not killing everyone who touched me and so I avoided putting myself in a situation where I might have to shake a hand or give a hug. I didn’t know these people very well, hardly at all in fact, and I don’t like being touched by people I don’t know very well (this is why I only give hugs to my immediate family, grandparents, my sister, and my close friends – everyone else is excluded). But I had to endure being touched through out the viewing, because that was the way old people helped console each other.
          When we first walked into the room my grandfather was clearly visible at the back amongst the many flower arrangements. Dell was aware of the reason for my moms leave and they sent several flower arrangements, although how they knew was a mystery to me. I looked at my grandfather for a long moment and then took pictures of all the flowers. It occurred to me to take a picture of him to remember what he looked like and write about it, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget what he looked like then and so I decided against taking a picture of him. But once I was done taking pictures I just looked at him for a long time.
          They did a pretty good job with the make up; you could hardly tell how pale and gaunt he was underneath it. They put make up on his prosthetic arm to try and make it look closer to the rest of his skin tone, but that didn’t work very well. My mother tried to smooth out the brown powder to make it look a little better. My sister asked if his skin was cold. My mother, covering his folded hand with her own, said that yes, he was cold. Without thinking about I reached out to touch my grandfather and immediately pulled away from the contact. I touched him again and then I went and sat down again.
          It wasn’t the cold, lifelessness of his body that had bothered me. Everyone’s body gets cold after death, especially after the body’s been in a giant refrigerator for several days. No, it was something else that caused me to recoil after touching him. His skin, once so warm and alive, was now smooth and fake. My grandfather no longer felt human, he felt like a wax sculpture.
          My great uncle Bob, my grandfathers’ youngest brother, was saying something to my dad. I tuned in temporarily to hear his say something about a doctor. My grandfather had become hunched, so that his head hung down and he couldn’t look up or see behind him anymore. Apparently some doctor told Bob that when the head was bent over like that it cuts off the airflow to the lungs. My grandfather often sat with his mouth open, like he was panting for air. And when the body doesn’t get enough air, the brain goes and then everything else collapses as well. The bronchitis is what finally put him in the grave, but it occurred to me that my grandfather had been suffocating for a very long time before he died.
          While sitting there in my chair next to my sister I looked around at the other people. There were five or six people wearing red, two or three people wearing purple, a lot of people wearing black or white, and only one person wearing orange – me. I was also one of the few people in a skirt. But the flowers were really pretty, and everyone else seemed to be in a pleasant mood, if only a bit sad. When I looked at my grandfathers body for too long though, it looked like he was still breathing in his casket. I had to remind myself that he was dead so I wouldn’t think that we were burying him alive. It made me feel like I was going crazy and I had to avoid looking at him for too long.
          Outside the weather was turning nasty and my father went around and informed everyone of the situation outside so they could act accordingly before the roads got too bad. Many of the older folk took off because icy roads are dangerous to drive on. We told everyone not to come to the funeral if the roads were icy tomorrow – we didn’t’ want any other casualties. It was nearly four thirty before we left the funeral home, and it was beginning to snow and the wind was blowing very cold. But even thought I was seeing a ton of people I didn’t know in the presence of my grandfather’s dead body, I didn’t cry.
          Back at the hotel my parents went out for pizza and we watched the fifth Harry Potter movie together in my grandmothers room. While my sister got a shower I called Devin, and then I got a shower and we all went to bed. Around midnight I heard the weather get really bad. Outside it was wet, snowing, windy, and cold enough to freeze someone to the bone – perfect weather outdoors to match the temperature inside.

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Monday December 15, 2008: The Funeral

          I wore a pair of black tights, black pinstripe pants, a white tank top and a gray three-quarter lengths top to the funeral with silvery flats and a silvery cross necklace. My sister insisted on straightening my hair, so I let her. I didn’t wear earrings. My sister wore my other pinstripe pants and a white sweater with high heels. My father wore a suit and my mother wore a dress with a blue jacket. My grandmother wore pants and a nice shirt and sweater.
          The service was being held in the church my grandparents used to attend in Jefferson City before they moved to Belton to live in an assisted living facility called Carnegie Village. Despite the snow the previous night, the cold weather, and the semi icy conditions of the road, there were a surprising amount of people at the funeral. Even the Kansas City branch of the family managed to make it.
          The service consisted of two pastors speaking and a full military honors ceremony. My grandfather had served in the military from 1951 – 1952 in the Korean War, and had retired afterwards with a Purple Heart and a full pension for the rest of his earthly life because of wounds he had acquired in Korea. While in the field he had stepped on a land mine, thus loosing his left arm and right leg. However, this didn’t stop him. He was a very get up and go person, and that’s just what he did. My grandfather went through rehab and then went to seminary and became a preacher. And after he retired from that he stayed active in the church.
          As people filed into the church to see my grandfather, they also greeted my grandmother. I’ve seen my grandmother cry before, but I’ve never seen her weep. She wept at my grandfathers funeral, and it broke my heart to see her cry. When the last person finished greeting her she went back to look at my grandfather and hen came back.
          “Some people will kiss the body in the casket, but I can’t do that because that’s not Glenn. Once the soul has left the body, the person just doesn’t exist anymore. They don’t look real,” she said to my sister and I. “He looks like, well…”
          “Like a wax sculpture,” I finished for her.
          When the funeral director came over to ask my grandmother if she wanted to see him one last time before they closed the casket she said no, that she’d said her goodbyes. I watched them take the flowers off the light brown wood and carry them to the back. When they closed the casket, it was like they reduced his entire life to pictures, home videos, pieces of paper, and memories left in minds and objects. But when the military personnel unfolded the flag on the casket, it was like they erased him from existence.
          Throughout the service I took notes, and when I’d finished taking notes I just listened and tried to remember as much as I could. Most of it didn’t stick, but some of it did. My observations were many and different, but I wrote them down as they occurred to me.
          The church was set up for the holiday musical the church had just finished performing and set consisted of the stable scene and a building scene. But it still looked nice. There were eleven keys hanging on a line of hooks on the wall, There were three baskets on a shelf, a vase in front of a forth basket, a candelabra, some fire kennel thing, and six silver cups. There was an archway leading to what I saw as stairs, a door painted on the scene and a window showing a story mea in greens and grays so vivid it was like seeing the real thing. And then there was the manger scene next to it.
          There was a baptismal fountain on the back wall above the congregation which could be reached by stairs in a back room. The cross hanging there was lit and visible from below where the congregation was seated. As I looked at my grandfathers flag covered casket I noticed that there were nineteen or twenty different flower arrangements. There were roses, tiger lilies, white lilies, regular lilies, carnations, poinsettias, sunflowers, daisies, irises, some kind of yellow flower that wasn’t a tulip or a daffodil, and one green leafy plant with a fake bird in it (my grandmother really liked this one).
          No one was really wearing much black either. Oh sure, there was black, but there weren’t many people in overly formal attire and there were all kinds of colors. There were several people in red, lots of black and white, gray, blue, pink, patters, ties, suits, and all kinds of sweaters.
          At the end of my observations I caught several pieces of the service. They were talking about my grandfather and one of the pastors said of my grandfather, “What a spirit, what a heart.” I miss him already. The way he walked, his voice, his stories. There was not a time when my grandfather was talking that I wasn’t listening.
          After the pastors were one speaking, the military personnel came forward and folded the flag. It was done in perfect silence by both of the men and then one of them took it and extended it over the coffin. He turned it twice and then brought it to his chest, turned, and walked to my grandmother. He extended it towards her.
“Ma’am, this flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation as a token of our appreciation for the honorable and faithful service rendered by your loved one.”
          He presented her with a coin and repeated the same phrase again. Then, he saluted her and walked to the back of the church. The doors were opened so that we could hear the guns go off outside. I heard the officer shout orders to the troops, I heard the guns tap and clack as they moved. Ready. Fire. My mother flinched in front of me but I stood still. That was one. Then the next one went off. Two. I closed my eyes and the third one went off. Three.
          I had maintained a silent sadness during the funeral, but it wasn’t until the bugle player began Taps that I cried. The shots had been hard enough to bear, in their own way they sounded like the toll of the bell – dutifully announcing the dead and passed. But the Taps… the music broke me. I felt the hot, salty tears roll down my face and I was temporarily blinded as they welled in my eyes and spilled over, landing on my chest, running down my neck, and soaking into my shirt. With that one song, it was like they erased my grandfather from the face of the earth – he ceased to exist.
          I procured a tissue from the box and dried my eyes. My mind picked out something the pastor had said and it dashed through my thoughts for a brief moment before disappearing. However fleeting though, the thought comforted me.
          These old bodies wear out like the cover on a book, but it’s what’s inside that maters.