Final Arrangements (13 page)

"This is weird," he said. "I should have told
you. I should have said I'd give up the call for you."

"Stretch, are you going to help me bury my
father or not!"

This statement, delivered with a high degree
of cooling rasp, cleared the air of all tomfoolery, and bucked
Stretch up to where he was able to get a grip and attend to the
matter at hand.

He led her through the tall, wide doors and
the two were instantly amazed at the splendor of the place. It was
as though they had suddenly come upon a small anteroom belonging to
God, where the Almighty appeared from time to time to attend to
minor matters pending in the region. At this point they were
approached by a well-dressed man who was obviously not God, but
from the cut and quality of his suit, and the shine on his shoes
perhaps worked for Him, and was used to meeting all kinds of people
who entered the doors for the first time. The man's experience in
greeting the bereaved survivors of loved ones was evidenced by the
fact that he flinched not at the appearance they made, in
particular as regarded Stretch's overall height, her floppy hat, or
the impossibly loud yellow parrots on Stretch's shirt.

"May I help you?" he said. There was a
solemnity to the greeting, sounding as though he was addressing
royalty.

"I ... we're here to see about arranging a
funeral. We had a 2 o'clock appointment to see somebody."

"You're Ms. Ireland?"

"Yes. The funeral is for my mom and dad. I
guess it will be a small funeral. Just a few friends and immediate
family and relatives. But we want a spot in the sun. For the
burial, I mean. And I hope it doesn't cost too much. I guess you
charge a little more since you've got the best location and
everything, but I don't want to spend too much. Dad was a frugal
man. But we need a good place, because they aren't from here. This
wasn't where they were originally from, so they won't be as
comfortable being buried all by themselves, with a bunch of
strangers, you know. Did I mention Mom will be buried with him,
actually, maybe she'll be beside him, or actually in the coffin
with him, or however you can do it, whatever's legal, that is.
Because Mom's still in her box, the same one she was in two years
ago. She's out in the car now, but we can bring her in and--"

"--Shannon! Shannon!" Stretch, moving close
to her, putting a strong, comforting arm around her. "C'mon, let's
go to the man's office and sit down. Your legs are shaking. It's
going to be okay."

Shannon had been sheltered from the process
of preparing her mother for burial, and thus was ill equipped for
the job at hand. Two years ago, Phil had taken care of the
business, had volunteered for the duty, and at Dad's request, had
arranged for the casket, the flowers, the church memorial--all of
it done simply and in good taste--save for the remains still being
in their cardboard box.

The funeral planner was a man who introduced
himself as Edwin Markham, a slim individual with a dry handshake
and frameless spectacles floating in front of watery blue eyes. He
led them to a comfortable office. Shannon realized that funerals
didn't just happen, that instead they were planned meticulously and
down to the last detail. With this realization there came to the
surface of her interior being a host of fears, chief of which was
continuing to face up to the fact that her father was gone.

Dad Ireland had been a family man, not an
aspirant to the type A, alienating behaviors of high ambition, but
more a man who preferred to be at home with his family, and counted
his wealth in his children rather than the currency of this present
world. Joe Ireland counted her, and Phil, and Phil's children as
more precious than rubies, more valuable than diamonds. He had been
content to spend what he earned to further their life experience.
Dad had fed them, clothed them, educated them, and been an example
of the faith. An unusual man, a man who'd never divorced, or drank
alcohol, or gambled. Aside from a small tendency to swear out loud
at times of extreme stress, Dad lived a clean, quiet, humble
life.

She realized suddenly what an unusual man he
actually was--a man of the twentieth and 21st centuries who never
smoked cigarettes, or chased after the pomps and illusions of a
world adrift far from any sensible moral kilter.

She wondered what sophomoric and unctuous
routine the ghost-eyed funeral director Markham, would pull on her,
aware that she was totally at his mercy in this business, she being
deeply spaced out by her grief and disorientation--and he a man
who'd processed countless thousands of such as she, a man who
behind the scenes toted up figures, assessed the bottom line and
perhaps even accrued monthly and annual bonuses from the
corporation based on his ability to eke out certain percentages of
spending above the norm.

"I can't do this," she suddenly said to
Markham and Stretch.

But Markham responded to this declaration of
helplessness by officiously gripping a gold Cross ball-point and
producing from a side desk drawer a legal-size multi-part fill-in
form. "Your father's full name?"

"Joseph Ireland."

"Middle name?"

"None."

"Your full name?"

"Shannon Elizabeth Ireland."

"Your mother's full name?"

"Martha Elizabeth Cowan Ireland."

"Your mother was of Scots ancestry?"

"Yes. And English. It's why we were all
raised Presbyterian, even though we're mostly Irish."

"And you mentioned something about her
ashes."

"We brought them with us. Dad never had them
buried, or interred, or whatever you call it. But now it's time.
She's probably in your records somewhere. We had you do the funeral
for her about two years ago."

Markham half-smiled and nodded, as though
this admission of a mother in a cardboard box was an everyday
confession. And probably it was nothing to top some of the stories
he'd no doubt heard, stories involving the use of laboratory
facilities, pharmacological compounds, and next generation alloys.
He did not ask her to elaborate.

"Hey," Stretch interjected. "There's no clock
in this room. No way to tell the passage of time."

Markham likewise did not pick up the ball on
that comment, either, remaining comfortably in control, steering
the process back to the next box on the form.

"Your father's date of birth?"

"June 30, 1939."

"And where was he born?"

"He was ... uh, oh. Somerville, Tennessee.
Sounds kind of rinky dink, doesn't it? It was another world. Did
you know he and his friends used to ride horses through the woods
to hang out at other small towns? He went all the way to New York
on a scholarship for his engineering degree from Clarkson, but came
back to Tennessee to work for Union Carbide. He met my mother in
Memphis when they put him in the hospital after he burned his feet.
Mom was a student nurse. It turns out she grew up in Fayette County
the same as he did, but they never met until he came back from
college. I'm talking too much, aren't I?"

And so it went, for the better part of an
hour. Form after form. As though they were filling out, not the
details of a death, but a mortgage loan application. Without
sanctimonious preamble, or pause to collect emotions, or small
jokes to break the tensions. Just a straight ride through the
details of a life lived and now fully spent. A life which would be
formally returned to the earth in very short order, into a plot
they'd picked out from a site map, much in the same way she had
ofttimes before selected seats for the opera or a concert.

The dryness to the process she found
comforting. Markham had somehow assessed her station in life, and
came up with the correct assumption that she was a business woman
accustomed to the waterless environs of data transmission and
bottom lines. At the end of the hour, Shannon had in her possession
a folder containing a variety of literature and a checklist of
missing items required for the completion of the final
arrangements. There was even a secure website address and a private
e-mail address for the posting of important information, an option
which Shannon found herself strangely grateful for. At which point,
Markham led them both to the entrance of the casket room.

"Oh Lord," she said, as the door was open and
the reality of the whole thing hit her right in the face. A wide
assortment of coffins presented themselves, from every color
perspective and design fashion, their hopeful rectangles, like
architectural strays in some sort of impound facility for unwanted
furniture, positioned hopefully at every possible angle and viewing
height, each one with top fully open, as though to welcome some
unexpected and wildly varied host of persons who would be arriving
all at once, each to his or her own uniquely custom designed final
home, the square footage of which would be less than that of even
the smallest bathtub or coat closet formerly enjoyed by the
casket's new occupant.

"Take your time," he said. "You'll note that
we don't force you into a bargaining position at the time of your
bereavement. Our caskets, like all of our services, are clearly
priced, the price including all taxes and surcharges required by
the various governing bodies."

"Just like buying a refrigerator. Do we get a
free toaster?" Stretch said.

It was a bad joke, but Markham remained
coolly neutral.

"Sorry," Stretch apologized. "And thanks for
not laughing or frowning. I'm sure you've heard every bad joke
there is. But it is a bit overwhelming. The fact that we all wind
up in one of these things, no matter how hard we try to ignore the
fact. When I was a kid, my friends used to joke that because I was
so tall, the undertaker would cut my legs off to make me fit. Oh,
gosh! I am sorry. I ... that was terrible! I guess I'm feeling the
pressure more than I thought!"

"If you'd rather not tour the showroom,"
Markham replied, deftly reflecting Stretch's metaphysical concerns
back to the world of the immediate, "I can show you a catalog, or
you may visit our display at the website, and make your choice from
there."

"Buying a coffin in cyberspace," Stretch
said. "What about it, Shannon. Are you up for something like
that?"

"We'll select our coffin here," she said.

"Our policy is to leave you alone to make
your decision," Markham said. "But feel free to call me if you have
any questions."

"Questions? I wouldn't know what to ask. It's
not exactly like buying a used car now, is it? I mean, these things
can't possibly come with any sort of lifetime guarantee. Oh. I
didn't mean that the way it sounded. Man, everything we say in this
place comes out like a bad pun."

Shannon tried to imagine the funeral service
itself. There'd be flowers, and scented candles, and Dad's favorite
preacher, Pastor Coughlan, the white haired old Presbyterian
minister who always wore his Tam O'Shanter to funerals and
weddings. She tried to imagine the diminutive Coughlan, shaking
with Parkinson's, standing there like Father Time, presiding over
the massive modernistic stylings of the Eterna Viktor. In spite of
herself, she laughed. The laughter disintegrated into nervous
giggling, which she with some difficulty stifled.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Not at all," Markham replied.

"I don't know where that came from," Shannon
said. "Maybe it's the pressure. I feel like a child, a frightened
child.

Markham rested his hand on the sleek side of
a huge, pod-shaped metallic container, lid open to reveal an almost
alien architectural styling, the thing resting on a silver and gold
scaffold against a background fresco of the hills of Tuscany, the
burnished sides glowing like fire under the intense luminosity of a
brace of cleverly aimed ceiling spots.

"That's very futurian," Stretch said. "Is it
a casket? It looks more like something they'd pack the baby Super
Boy in for his journey from Krypton to Earth."

Markham nodded. "This is our Eterna Viktor
model," he said. "The case is made from a titanium alloy, with a
zinc lining. It actually does come with a 500 year guarantee. The
price is $55,000, which includes a special monthly monitoring
service for the first 36 months. We actually line the burial site
itself with a two-foot layer of concrete to meet the guarantee
guidelines."

I can't for the life of me understand what
sort of person would spend $55,000 for a coffin with a guarantee. I
mean, what if the thing lasted only 300 years. There won't be
anybody around by then to cash in on the guarantee. And what
exactly is it that's being monitored?"

"We monitor the interior for changes. The
guarantee is that the unit won't be penetrated by air or water for
a minimum of 500 years. And since we seal it in a vacuum, it means
that your loved one's remains will remain in pristine
condition--almost as you last viewed them. And it's alarmed to
protect against theft."

"Wow." This from Stretch. "The alarm. Is that
a Hollywood thing?"

"Dad was more of the pine box type," Shannon
said. "You know, like the kind of coffin you'd see in a Clint
Eastwood movie. I mean, he was the kind of man who never even
bought a current model year vehicle. Except for the last vehicle he
purchased shortly before he died, which was something of a radical
departure for him."

"I understand," Markham said. He walked over
to a forlorn and miserable casket, set on a plain ledge against the
wall without benefit of artful lighting or any sort of additional
decoration. The thing was thin and square, covered with some sort
of depressing gray felt material. "This is our lowest price model.
We call it The Heritage. Priced at $2,000."

"Here's your pine box, Shannon," Stretch
observed. "No, wait. They must have glued on the felt for some
reason. Let me guess. It's not even real knotty pine. It's probably
some kind of particle board."