Yawning, I took another sip of coffee and stared at the stack of quizzes that I needed to grade before class. Reaching for the first quiz, I heard the phone ring. Hoping it wasn’t the Township schools, where both of our kids were enrolled, I answered the call. I was very surprised when the caller was my mom. She was old school and never called me at work, thinking I’d get in trouble if I took a personal call. There must be some emergency.
“Mom, what’s up? Are you ok?”
“Oh you,” she chuckled. “You always assume the worst.” I could imagine her shaking her head as she said, “I’mfine. I just have a question. Do you have a couple of minutes?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. So, what’s your question?”
“Well, hear me out before you answer.” This was not starting off well. I could hear her take a deep breath. “What would you think if I moved Dad?”
Moved Dad? “Mom, what are you talking about? How could you move Dad?” At that time, my father had been dead for over 15 years.
“Well, you remember that when Dad died, he wanted to be buried in the Veterans Cemetery in Rocky Hill, right?”
“Yeah?” I answered not at all sure where this was going.
“Well, at the time, they told me that they had a space for veterans but none for wives, so I can’t be buried with him when my time comes. Still, he really wanted a veteran’s cemetery… you know how proud he was of his service…so, of course we buried him there anyway.”
“Ok,” I said, still not catching on.
“They opened a new veterans cemetery in Middletown. I had a bright idea and I called to ask if there would be room for both of us.”
She paused a minute and then exclaimed “And there is!”
I took a deep breath. Probably two. I took another sip of my coffee. Probably two. And I said, “So, how does one move a 15-year-old corpse across town?”
She replied, “We don’t need to do anything. They will dig up the casket and move it to the new site.”
I found this to be a bit unnerving. Thinking of my older siblings, I asked, “How do Kathy and Steve feel about this plan?”
“I haven’t talked to them yet. I was hoping you would be ok with it. I thought if you were ok with it, you could help me. You know, we could be a team. And together we could convince them.”
“So, you really want to do this?” I asked. I thought but did not add, “You really want to spend eternity within a few feet of Dad?” Most of the time, spending the dinner hour at the same table was a challenge for those two.
“Yes,” she said, I really do” and added with a giggle, “Besides, the plots are double-decker not side-by-side. I will finally be on top.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but if she wanted to move my Dad and rest with him after her death, I certainly wouldn’t discourage it. After getting the blessings of Kathy and Steve, the move was made.
Like Mom said, we really didn’t have to do anything. In fact, I am not sure that I even visited the new cemetery until nearly10 years later when she died.
By the time Mom died, she had moved from Connecticut to Michigan. The funeral home responsible for preparing her body and flying it back east called and asked me to deliver whatever clothing we wanted her to wear in the casket. We are a closed casket family, so I didn’t think it mattered much, but Kathy had very firm ideas.
“Give them the pink dress I gave her for Christmas last year,” she instructed.
“Sure,” I said, “sounds good.” Like I said, it didn’t matter to me, and if it helped my sister to know that Mom was wearing her gift, I was all for it.
I went to Mom’s closet and found the dress. Shoes? I had no idea. Do people get buried in shoes? I hope not. I certainly don’t want to be buried in shoes. But, thinking of my sister, I picked out the shoes that I imagined my mom would have worn with the dress. Ok.
Underwear? I found a bra and slip in her dresser. and added them to the pile. I looked for some underpants but couldn’t find any. This was no surprise. Mom had incontinence issues in her final months and wore Depends. She had told me she threw away all her regular underwear because just seeing it in her dresser depressed her.
I could not bring myself to send her off to meet her maker in Depends. I thought about going out and buying some panties but buying underwear for a corpse seemed too weird. I delivered the dress, shoes, slip, and bra to the funeral home. I figured that if they called about the missing panties, I would act surprised and bring something later.
They did not call.
My mom made her journey to the great hereafter wearing a very pretty pink dress, a lacy slip and bra, some fancy shoes, but, well, she went commando. It seemed right.
After all, she finally got to be on top.
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