My sister deals with stress with humor. Sometimes inappropriate humor. And sometimes something that's not quite humorous. But, I knew that trait would help keep me from losing it completely. She was at Damar first and went in to use the restroom. The first thing she said to the funeral director was "Business been good?" Yep, that's my sis.
A little background first. My mother was horrified at the thought of cremation. She threatened three of her children--including myself--with haunting us if we were to cremate her. And whether or not you believe in ghosts, we took her threat quite seriously. My mother had strong ties to The Big Guy. They'd've worked something out! To me, she had also asked that she get "something besides a pine box." Ooookay.
At Damar, the first thing was to find out what her life insurance payout was. Well, that didn't go as well as we thought. On the phone, I had indicated what I thought would be the payout. Not much, but should cover basic costs. So the guy helping us--I'll call him Bo--had worked up a draft of what we could do. I told Bo about my mom's "pine box" comment and what he had looked good. He left that with us while he went to get an exact amount from State Farm. I knew something was wrong when he came back in with the phone because the SF rep wanted to speak to me directly.
The payout--which hadn't been much to begin with--was less than half of what we expected. My heart sank As I hung up the phone, I said, "Well, I promised no pine box, so how about pressboard?"
We spent the next 45 minutes or so going over the options--which were few. Even my sister's humor was faltering. It looked like we'd have to cremate. One of the biggest costs by far was the opening and closing of the grave. The plot had been paid for when my dad passed on, but the cemetery fees were steep. Bo and my sister were looking to me to say yes to the cremation when, exasperated, I said "Even if we could put her in a pauper's grave, just so she wouldn't be cremated." When I looked at Bo and asked "Do they even do that anymore?" I could see he had thought of something. "You're mom's Catholic, right?" My sister and I both nodded. A hesitant smile played across his face and he said two words. "Catholic Charities"
After that, decisions were made quickly. Bo called the CC and we worked up (yet another) draft. There was more humor, as we felt much better about the whole thing. When we went to look at the casket, my sister's humor kicked into overdrive. I fed off of it. I think we both felt so relieved that we got the giggles. My sister and I, touching the cloth-covered casket, looked at each other and said simultaneously "pressboard!" and burst out laughing.
I looked around the display room and said "It's not as creepy in here as I thought it would be." My sister said, "Well, there aren't any dead bodies in them." I responded, "They could use mannequins." Bo grimaced. As we were leaving the display room, my sister set off another round of bad jokes by saying they should put buttons in the caskets with recordings so during a viewing you'd hear "Don't I look like myself?" I went further with "motion sensors" that could say "Does this casket make me look fat?" And "How's my hair look?" Bo beat a hasty retreat back to the conference room. I can't imagine why. But it's a very good thing there were no wakes going on at the time!
My sister took me to lunch afterwards. When we got to the restaurant, she said "We forgot about an obituary! That's another $125 or so." and whipped out her cell phone. Thinking about how word had spread so quickly through Facebook and email, I said "Do we really need it? Look how fast the news got out through Facebook and email." She closed her cell and said, "You're right."
After lunch, I tried to take a nap, but as emotionally drained as I was, I couldn't sleep. My brother was coming in from North Carolina that evening so I just tried to relax. I made some phone calls and put out emails and Facebook messages about the funeral arrangements.
My brother arrived early at about 5:45 p.m. He offered to take me to dinner, but I'd had that big lunch and wasn't hungry. I made it clear from the start that the food in the refrigerator was Brittany's. I handed him bread, lunch meat and cheese and let him make himself a sandwich. I was a little surprised that he wanted to stay at the house. He'd have to sleep in my mother's bed, which, although I had changed the sheets, was kind of creepy to me. I was able to escape upstairs about 8:30.
I'd have to say Monday was almost as stressful has Sunday had been.
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