Funerals

After I re-read my first entry last night, I felt sure that if and when I get the chance to do this, I will not like it at all. It will be more like slopping make up on dead people than anything else. The make up will be really bad. There will only be one color. One brush, not even a brush, a sponge.

Living across the street from a funeral parlor so far, has been sort of interesting. It is a big old gray house with dark green shutters. It has a long gray awning the stretches from it's front porch and a sign. Otherwise it is just a beautifully kept old house. I like that about funeral parlors, a lot of them are old homes. Funeral homes.

When there is a funeral the street fills up with cars. Women in heels wearing dark colors. Men in khaki's and white shirts. Sometimes there are a lot of young people. Sometimes people are hanging around in the street by their cars laughing. Once we heard someone fighting which I thought was appropriate for a funeral. Some old Italian sort of guy, yelling at some other younger guy. At least I think, I don't even know that I really saw them but my mind has made up these details. True or false, it's what I remember. My husband Joseph stood in the baby's room and looked out the window across the street. "I bet we'll get a lot of that," I said.

A couple of mornings ago, I was out trimming some shrubs on my front lawn. Cars were arriving for a funeral and the funeral director was outside approaching each car with a very enthusiastic, "Hello! Will you be following us to the cemetery today?!" It sounded like he was welcoming people to a wedding or a birthday party. Maybe someone very mean has died, I thought. Maybe he was just so overcome by the warm spring morning and the flowering trees that are everywhere you look.... he could not help himself.

There are always people standing on the porch smoking cigarettes. They mill around. I try to see myself through their eyes. Someone they love has died and there is a woman across the street weeding. There is a woman with a baby in a stroller. There is a couple with a baby standing on their front lawn across the street, looking at us... When I see them walking from their car to the parlor I want to run up to them and ask, "Who died?!" I am dying to know. Every time. This alone is a good enough reason to work at the funeral parlor. I'll know who died. Mostly I find myself wondering how old they were.

At the end of the funeral there was a single bagpipe player that stood outside and played. Why are bagpipes so sad? That vibration just wraps it's plaid flannel blanket around your heart and squeezes so gently, it's like the funny bone of musical instruments. The sad pipes. Those pipes fill up with air and hot wind runs through my chest and face. I kept trimming my shrubs while I cried.

My favorite thing about this funeral parlor is that there is an old fashioned phone ringing that comes from somewhere, in the house? Outside of the house? I can't tell. It sounds like it's outside but it is like the old phone on the wall sort of ring. I can't figure out what it is doing outside. Is it an alarm? "Another body has arrived," it says. Or, "Body on it's way out." "Another sale." "Another angel got it's wings."