Mr. Funeral Does His Job

Finally, after all the delays, Mr. Funeral made it to the funeral home this morning.

Was greeted by Ms. Pothole, who gave me a big, cheery, over-energized "Hello!!!"  It felt like I'd fallen through a trapdoor into a bizarre subset of the hospitality industry.  She would have fit right in in a small, not-too-sophisticated public relations firm, too.

But she grew on me.  She's young and maybe she's nervous.  But I was calm and she calmed down and she turned out to be an effective guide through more than an hour's worth of paperwork.  There were contracts and authorizations and transfer certificates and schedules of charges.  About the charges - they're staggering, more than double what my mother's funeral cost in New York.  Not including the cemetery costs (more on those in a moment), the whole affair - which will involve me, my wife, my father and a rabbi - is going to run as much as a full month at the nursing home.  My father would be horrified - I can hear him demanding that we forget about the ceremony and lose the rabbi and put him in a third-class envelope and mail him to New York.  But there's a right way to do these things and that doesn't involve sending him off in a FedEx box.  So we'll do what we have to do.

Ms. Pothole was also extremely helpful in opening the negotiations with Woodlawn, the Bronx cemetery where he'll end his travels.  Like everything in New York, his interment (or "in-urn-ment," I think she called it) seems to revolve around real estate.  What would death be without a complicated property transaction?  The issue is that my mother, who's been there for seven years, is established in a small crypt in a very nice chapel, right by the Woodlawn stop on the Number 4 train.  But there are no adjoining spaces, and to get him into the same chapel would mean placing him several crypts away - down the hall, so to speak.  That doesn't work for me.  So we'll need to have her disinterred (dis-in-urned?), and moved, so that they can be placed together.  There'll be additional costs for the dis-in-urn-ment, and for removing her name from the granite facing of her old home (studio?)  And since I own the crypt (actually the only real estate in my name), Woodlawn will have to broker it for me.  Then they'll set them up in a new crypt - either in adjoining spaces or in one big one.  About that - Ms. Pothole asked whether I'd want a big urn so that their ashes could be commingled.  I was horrified, because at that instant, in some other dimension, my mother was horrified.  Privacy, dignity, autonomy, please!  It's bad enough that he's showing up next door.  I can hear her, too - "What?  You again?"

As of 5 p.m. today, I haven't heard back from Woodlawn about spaces or dates or other terms that need to be settled.  So negotiations will have to drag on into tomorrow.  Like I said, it's a New York thing.

After contracts were set, it was time for me to go downstairs and identify the body.  This is always a strange experience, but always in a different way.  In my mother's case, it was satisfying.  I'm not much for the idea of "closure," but there was a degree of it there.  She'd died a hard cancer death and what I remember about my last sight of her was how relaxed and at peace she seemed - her face had fallen out of all that pain and she looked like herself again.  My father, by contrast, looked like no one I'd ever seen before.  I took one quick glance and turned away - and then turned back again, because there was something unexpectedly striking about him.  The skin on his face had fallen and tightened, and he was overly made up, and his nose was more prominent than it had ever been in life.  He looked for all the world like one of the pharaohs you might see in a display case at one of the better art museums.  As a result, he seemed to have acquired the calm and self-possession and detachment that he struggled for all his life.  He wasn't at normal ease, he was at a sort of regal ease.  So what he gave me in that last moment wasn't closure, rather a certain opening - a whole new aspect of himself that might be a distortion, or it might have been there all along, but in either case I'll have to factor it in and work with it.

In the end, Ms. Pothole sent me off with shopping bags full of shiva candles and stationery and document folders and small prayer pamphlets.  We scheduled our miniature funeral for Friday morning at 11.

From the funeral home I drove to the nursing home one last time to pick up his belongings.  I'd already donated most of them - all his clothing, and also a table radio we'd set to a classical station (he used to love classical music, and in the nursing home it calmed him).  What was left was a shopping bag full of photographs that I'd meant to use to decorate his room.  They were family pictures, and also a portrait and a candid of my father in his Coast Guard days.  He enjoyed them in his apartment, then slowly lost the ability to recognize them (on one of my last visits, in the early fall, I had to tell him that the Coast Guard picture was of him).  I never got them hung in the nursing home - he had that very difficult transition, and soon after that he lost all his ability to connect to them.  There was one old picture of a pet cat from my childhood, and the staff put that up for a while, but he never noticed it.  I'd always wanted to wind up with those pictures and now I have them.  It's a consolation, though not a big one.

I didn't have an appointment - I just showed up unannounced - but through some sort of providence or coincidence or however you like it, I immediately ran into all the staff people I'd worked most closely with - P, and A from palliative care, and H the charge nurse.  It was very nice.  I got to thank all of them for what they'd meant to me, which is really beyond expression but you try.  P said, "Now it's Alan's time - you need to concentrate on that."  I agreed with her and I suppose she's right, but I have no idea what it means or how to go about it.  I guess I'll have to make that a project at some point.

Afterward I drove home - stopping for errands at CVS and the ATT store (life goes on). 

This afternoon there was a call from the rabbi, who seemed nice and warm and will probably be good at his impossible job, which is to eulogize someone he's never met.  I'm not sure why  but I got the sense that unlike his New York colleague, he'll probably remember to keep his cell phone off.

Now I'll wait for services on Friday, and hope that before then, Woodlawn will be willing to settle on a date so I can take him home to New York.

Comments

[Shu]

"In death" never seems to look like "in life". I was, would disappointed be the right word??? I guess for want of a more precise one ... I was disappointed with how both my father and then my mother looked in final repose. "Almost right" just left me sad for that somewhere tucked away from my actual grief. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme. And both parents would have been horrified if I had "made a fuss" on their accounts. So I honored their principles as the more important.

And the paperwork! Oy! You are so right about all that. Who handles this for people without an "Alan" or a "Shu" to pore over the tiny words on long paged forms and scrawl initials and signatures on all the ticked places. You are doing it all very well.

I hope Friday will be kind to you all. I will be adding my small prayers to those honoring your father. Peace.

[julie]

Alan, once again you are giving me things to think about regarding the future. Thank you for going ahead and giving me a heads up on what might be wise to try and think about before it happens and I get bogged down in the details and forget to view the big picture.
I have posted your paragraph in my blog and hope you will see it as a good thing. I'm still learning the ropes on this posting thing so I'm not sure what the trackback means. I'll continue to learn and perhaps be able to do that next.
Carry on like you do
Julie

[Cathy]

Alan, I haven't checked in here since you got sick. I'm content that your ordeal is coming to a close, though I'm appalled that even the weather seems to challenge your every move. I agree with the philosophy that we can't pick and choose. We just have to keep on putting one foot in front of the other on this journey. My Mom was doing fine in her assisted living until January 20th, when she had what looked like a stroke but, after all possible tests could only be labelled three seizures. Hospitalized for five days and into the skilled nursing section of her home. Doing well physically but can't remember anything. Still recognizes me (or pretends to, I'm not sure). She had pneumonia when she got to the hospital, probably from inhaling food or water.

My thoughts and prayers are with you as always and especially on Friday. I wish I could be there to give some comfort. You will never know how much comfort you have given me with this blog. You have made this journey much less frightening for me and definitely less lonely.

Your father is at peace now and he would want you to have some peace as well. You have done a wonderful job taking care of him and now you must take care of yourself.

[Janet]

Alan, I haven't written before, but I am on the road behind you with my mother. I echo Cathy's thought about the journey -- I so value the light of your torch in the distance; it makes everything seem possible.

Be gentle with yourself in the aftermath; you did all you could, and that will sustain you. But it will still be incredibly difficult, I know.

[Alan G. Ampolsk]

Thanks, everyone.

We seem to be navigating the (new) waters. In most respects, it's easier than being a caregiver.

Julie - good blog. URL going up soon.

Cathy - I forget if you've had a conversation with hospice, but you might want to think about getting them involved. They can be very helpful, and in Alzheimer's, the usual hospice time constraints often don't apply.

I'm glad to hear that the blog is helpful to the rest of you who are on the path. That's what it's for.