In all my days I have taken care to ensure I am presenting my best physical self to the world, slicing and dividing my best bits from my worst as does a scalpel to a piece of clay. The mechanicality by which I paint my skin with cover-up and flesh my eyes with color is a comfort to the horror of my near future, so I focus my attention on masquerading as a pretty Evelyn albeit a thoughtless one today. I craft, with care, the face which I will be presenting to the world on this day in which I am traveling home to attend my grandmother Lily’s funeral service. I am to be present and ready for departure from my childhood home by 11:00 am and based on assumption from my travels so far I will arrive much earlier than I’m needed so I pause my GPS directions and decide to take the scenic route.
The death of my grandmother Lily was met with artificial surprise but genuine sorrow, in that she was the Lisbon family’s matriarch, however very old. There are things I’d like not to lose along with my grandmother; she carried with her, always, a scent of talcum powder so strong it crystallized behind her, in all its carcinogenic glory, as does a tail to a cat. And catlike she was, quiet and intimidating but a comfort to attach oneself to. Had I ever seen her bare-faced it was an accident on her account and I assume my hyperfixation on my appearance was inherited in this way. She carried an aura of glamor and style about her always, yet never to a point of conceit.
What a menial interaction it was, the last time I saw her. I was given orders by my mother to deliver her a box of leftover pastries we had from a Mother’s Day brunch which she was unable to attend because of a small cold that, in her old age, had left her bedridden. So off I went, dressed dually to bear the cold and in hopes of receiving my desired approval, in my cherry hooded coat and tall brown leather boots. My knock at the door was left unanswered, so I let myself in. Her house smelled not unfamiliarly of licorice and bars of soap but I noticed an unusual stillness about the air, likely unmoved since her last visitor. Its silence was left untainted save for the tapping of my boots up to her bedroom door, left ajar presumably to let the last drops of daylight creep in at this midafternoon November hour. She lay asleep in her bed and to not disturb her I left the basket of sweets on her bureau, taking not even a second glimpse at her face.
Perhaps the retrospection of this thought lessens its value, but I look back at this memory and think how strange she looked, unconscious in her bed. It could’ve been the bare face, or the illness, but the feeling of dread that sinks me in my seat when recalling this memory of her face is unforgettable. I’d like to think this was not in fact my last memory of her because it wasn’t really her in that bed.
So it goes…my drive is long and dull and grounding. I indulge in the sweetness and stillness of a weekday drive through the surrounding area of the city with which I reside, taking it in in all its emptiness. The skeletons of what once represented spring hang ugly and low above the roof of my car, and I start to resent their life, as solemn as it may be, because what does a tree offer to the world that my grandmother didn’t and who chooses these things, who survives and who doesn’t? Personally speaking, a tree provides nothing to me but oxygen and what good is oxygen if I don’t want it? My own human anatomy is infinitely more complicated, in my humble opinion, and the simple fact that I have the facilities to see and acknowledge the depthlessness of this repugnant feature of my drive is fact enough. No, trees do not have eyes and I acknowledge this fact before giving one, closest to my line of sight, the meanest, most vicious stare I can as I drive past. My grandmother Lily had two eyes.
On all this nonsensical thinking I have wasted the better half of my drive, and before I know any better I am home. I park my car on the curb closest to my door and in Hallmark fashion my mother, sister, and Oscar are awaiting my arrival on the porch, smiling unusually intensely considering the circumstances. Oscar is my mother’s insipid boyfriend, and I will not speak on him further because it exhausts me to do so. I am given no time to enter the house but am rushed right to the car. The drive to the funeral home is silent save for the sound of Oscar’s mouth breathing. With a passive, glazed eye do I look out the window and admire the streets and sights that once were a part of what I called home. It is not unusual for me to feel nostalgic here, almost instinctual, however today I am quite the opposite. A smell of rebirth lingers in the recycled air of my mother’s sedan. But it seems I have forgotten I am here for a funeral.
The funeral is a parade of nonsense. We all have been crammed, surely a purposeful testament to my grandmother’s popularity, in the basement area of a local Protestant church to stumble through the funeral proceedings. The wall is plastered with some of my grandmother’s finest photographs, and morbidly scattered around the room are her possessions. Most noticeably, a shrine dedicated to her late Carlotta, whereupon sits a granite container of her ashes and a Burberry collar. Carlotta was my grandmother’s retirement project: she was an old, bitch of a terrier whom she gave all her superfluous love. She hated anyone but my grandmother, and the feeling was often mutual. I thought she was quite ugly.
Feelings of awkwardness dwell in my arms as I stand in the viewing line; I don’t know where to put them. Although I am relieved to be on the receiving end of these greetings, I hate the formality and artificiality with which I am greeted by my grandmother’s most beloved brief acquaintances, the majority of these guests. They walk through this line with obligation, and necessity, not sincerity. I soon find solace in watching the faces of these strangers as they interact with the casket. I like to see their eyes shift in discomfort, from her hands to her face, and then to their own hands to simulate prayer. I like the way in which it appears as if they are just checking on themselves to see if they still possess living hands, just to make sure. In all this thought I have yet to see the body myself.
As the crowd dwindles and the procession has ended, I feel a tap on my shoulder and it is my mother.
‘Come say your final goodbye.’
To whom?
Before I speak I am rushed to the casket for my visitation. I try to keep myself composed, to pay as little attention as possible to the dead body in front of me, as I think to myself who invented an open casket and why do these things have to happen? But I can’t help but notice something wonky going on with her eyelids. One appears to be deflated, almost empty; she is winking at me with her eyes closed, I think.
I point my finger, trembling, at this eye.
‘Mother, why does it look so odd?’
I watch as my mother politely tilts her head in focus, subtlety enough as to not insult her dead mother.
‘Well, they must’ve taken out her prosthetic eye. Y’know, from the cancer and all.’
‘She didn’t have two eyes?’
‘Nope. Haven’t you ever wondered why one of ‘em never moved with the other?’
No, I never wondered that. Never. Was I even paying attention? What a silly thing to dwell on, but how silly is it that I might not have known her at all like I thought? One functioning eye. How could I have missed it? My head spins at the thought of my idiocy and soon my body syncs up and I am spinning, nauseous and dizzy, nudged up against the casket of my grandmother Lily. If I wanted any more attention than I am already receiving I would let out the scream that is cooking in the back of my throat and closing in on my tonsils. But my arms, once again disassociated from my brain, proceed my thoughts in their choice to grab the closest, heaviest thing to me and throw it against the wall.
Carlotta’s ashes hit the floor opposite me with a startling crash and I am flooded with an intoxicating sense of relief. The fantasy, in which this act of mania was the correct thing to do at a funeral, dissipates immediately upon the sound. I can’t hear the arousal of the crowd surrounding me through the fog shooting from my ears, likely for the better. Nobody is moving, I think. The fallout of ashes lands inside the pot of an artificial tree. What an idiot I am. I remain standing, at the altar, asking for forgiveness from the audience I have unintentionally gained, and whomever will see me elsewhere, an all knowing spirit that is responsible for this arbitrary way of things and the stupid reason we are gathered for the viewing of a dead relative. I know my grandmother would be laughing at the scene I’ve created, because what a scene it is!
I decide that if a funeral is a celebration of the dead then it's only so because it is a punishment for the living.
