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<\/a><\/p>\nThe casket was sky blue with shiny new chrome.<\/p>\n
Her house\u00a0had been\u00a0painted blue, back when she was well enough to live it in on her own. Oh. There were things she couldn\u2019t do anymore, not like she used to do. She couldn\u2019t keep up with the watering in the summers. The dry land areas of Oregon can get quite hot and dusty in July and August. She kept her beloved hydrangea bush watered good but in the other flower beds she asked the girls to plant artificial flowers in them, please.<\/p>\n
They thought it odd, digging in the dirt that a\u2019way, to stick plastic irises in the ground. Why not just let the grass fill in the flower beds? But they didn\u2019t question the elderly lady. They had too much respect for her for that.<\/p>\n
They were young girls when they first\u00a0met her, while helping their brother out on his paper route before finally taking it over from him. The girls\u00a0stayed in touch with her over the years, even after she was moved off to that nursing home. She had always wanted daughters but only had sons. That\u2019s what she told the girls when they would visit her on Saturday mornings. One girl would mop the kitchen floor. The other would vacuum the carpets. One would polish the silver, the other would polish the furniture. And all the while they would hear the stories of a family they did not know and, save for a few, ever did meet.<\/p>\n
I interviewed her once about life as it had been, back when her husband owned the local drug store. What I recall best was how she despised the big Mart stores. It is hard for the elderly to get around those big stores, she said. The concrete floor is hard on the hips and people with health problems can\u2019t walk that far just to pick up a few items. I have thought of that many times as I\u2019ve wandered the aisles myself looking for just a handful of things.<\/p>\n
Yesterday the preacher, who didn\u2019t know her at all, recounted how she liked everything to be matchy-matchy. How she would carry a swath of fabric around in her purse for months, sometimes years, looking for the exact matching color. I looked over at my daughter and laughed. She was wearing a bracelet, earrings, and a brooch all made of the same green stone. Fake emeralds. A gift from the woman whose body was inside that blue casket.<\/p>\n
My daughter smiled through her tears. She has a tender heart this daughter of mine. She is a girl given to passion. When she loves she loves with her whole heart. Nothing held back in reserve.<\/p>\n
The last time they visited, the lady of the artifical flowers did not remember my daughter\u2019s name. And although my daughter told it to her, the lady couldn\u2019t quite place her.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t know me but she knew she loved me.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what my daughter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t know me but she knew she loved me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked how she knew that? Did the lady say something?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I just knew it. I could see it in her face.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our faces often say more than our lips reveal. That\u2019s why writers like me are always studying people, looking for the raised eyebrow, the sly grin, the jaw clenched, the furrowed brow.<\/p>\n
But I had completely missed that moment right before the preacher gathered us around the blue casket. I was looking off over yonder at the way the sunlight filtered through the trees, thinking back to that season\u00a0not so long ago when I stood near this same place as friends buried their\u00a016-year-old son, killed in a farming accident.<\/p>\n
My daughter saw the whole thing, though. The furrow in the woman\u2019s brow as her ex-husband\u00a0came walking up the\u00a0asphalt. He was the last to arrive.<\/p>\n
The woman stated to all within earshot that it was so inappropriate. My daughter was confused. She thought maybe the ex-wife was talking about\u00a0how the man had parked his car on a different hillside. Or maybe, what? Was she bothered by the blue-tooth earpiece\u00a0in his ear?<\/p>\n
\u00a0I was watching him at this point. Not her. He has always been a good-looking fellow. Age and gravity had not pulled him closer to the middle of things, the way it had her. He stood straighter than in years past. Free now, I\u2019ve heard, from the addictions and destructive way of living that had once troubled him.<\/p>\n
He was hanging back, trying not to be intrusive, just wanting to be there, to pay his respects to the lady in the blue coffin, the one, he said later, who had loved him like family and helped him through the hard time of his life. Their daughter would never have known her grandmother if not for him, he added.<\/p>\n
That part was true. Many times when the girls were there he would bring his young daughter by for a visit with her grandmother. That\u00a0 young daughter is older now, high school age. She had started toward her father when her mother stopped her and told her \u201cYou came with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then, in a fit of sheer ugliness,\u00a0the woman\u00a0shouted out before God and everybody at the father of her daughter: So inappropriate. You are not welcome here. <\/em><\/p>\nShe was family feuding at the grave site.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you can see more than the look of love in a person\u2019s face. Sometimes bitterness spills like acid, transforming a creature of beauty into a grotesque gargoyle.<\/p>\n
His shoulder slumped forward, his chin quivered. Hesitation shadowed him.<\/p>\n
She herded their daughter and her other children to the far end of the casket, a good spot to listen to the preacher talk about the faithfulness of God.<\/p>\n
He hung back, far behind anyone else. But it was a small crowd, not much larger than a dinner party group. His presence was acutely noted by everyone there. His distance less a show of respect than one of rejection.<\/p>\n
My daughter wept.<\/p>\n
She knew the lady in the blue casket would not want this. Not here. Not today. Not at her grande finale. She looked at me and I saw in her face what she didn\u2019t say \u2014 What should we do, Mama?<\/p>\n
I walked over and took my place right next to him. He recognized my daughter first. \u201cI remember you,\u201d he said, offering his hand in greeting. His chin quivered still. His voice cracked with emotion. I offered him my hand and my name. Oh. Sure, he said, recounting something I had written recently. We stood there together, the three of us, apart from the rest.<\/p>\n
It was a brief ceremony. The briefest of ceremonies. The\u00a0cassette recording\u00a0of Amazing Grace<\/em> playing on the Boom Box got stuck. An attendant from the funeral home slapped it once and it restarted, only to get stuck again.<\/p>\nOh. Well. You know the rest of the song, right, the preacher tried to make light of someone\u2019s shoddy work ethic. My daughter sang the song to herself and cried.<\/p>\n
When you\u00a0are 98 and can\u2019t remember the names of the people you know you love, people sigh\u00a0of deep relief when you die. There\u2019s a smugness\u00a0among the living that the dying don\u2019t possess.<\/p>\n
Flowers aren\u2019t the only artificial things we find ourselves tending.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/a><\/p>\n