A Short Personal History of Death

By TRB

Lately I have been thinking a lot about death - not that there is a lot to think about, since you can only ponder the experience right up to the moment of it. And then, who knows? It seems like people have been dropping like flies and although it is difficult and sad to miss them, I find it quite satisfying most of the time to have outlived them.

I am after all, in the race-you-to-the-death stage, the race you want to lose. I figure I've got 20 maybe 30 more years of being intermittently pissed off and sometimes close to being happy.

Nothing gets at me more than a wake and I would advise my friends not to have one. I know it is presumptuous but I don't care. If you choose to have a wake, I can tell you, I will not be there. I stopped going to wakes the day people began jumping into caskets.

I believe my grandmother, who was a terrible loser of death races and was 100 years old, was the first to take the plunge. It occurred at my Uncle Timothy's wake. Timothy was a captain in the Merchant Marine and he docked in San Francisco stayed long enough to die of throat cancer and didn't bother to mention it to any of his three families, one in Weymouth, Mass, one if Japan and one in New York City.

He was the father of children in each family and he was married to each mother at the same time. My brother said something to my father like "Isn't that bigamy? And my dad replied, "Yes that's very big of you, now why don't you shut up." I spent many summer days on Timothy's back porch in Weymouth. I remember a large shadow passing overhead threatening to block out the sun, a blimp, the first time in my life I had seen one.

I remember his ukulele on that back porch where he would sing songs to the acres of deep woods or to us.If I try I can still hear him singing to my sister an old Johnny Mercer song that Bobby Darin had covered and it was once again turning into a hit. The lyrics we're "You must have been a beautiful baby/you must have been a wonderful child/When you were only starting to go to kindergarten/You must have drove the little boys wild . . ."

I don't know why I remember this experience. Perhaps it was because the lyrics to the song were true. My sister Mary was indeed very beautiful.

My father had some friends over that day, which was probably a Saturday. They had dismantled a perfectly good car, installed a much larger engine - badly - and were now across the street arguing with a cop. I watched as five or six guys held my father's arms as he attempted to strangle that cop. And the cop actually took his riot baton out, which my father would have made him eat, but he was smart enough to toss it off to the side. It always ended the same way, with the chief of police - our next-door neighbor - arriving at the scene and talking to my father who would then apologize to the cop. It was just another day in my crazy family.

But that was all over now and my ancient grandmother was crawling into a casket after Timothy. That was really the first time I let my scary family get to me. I left just as several family members were trying to remove her from Timothy's dead arms and I never went to another of their wakes. But that is not really true.

When my father died, I attended his wake. I was still young and thought that maybe dead people could take things with them if you just left them in their casket, things they might use later, you know, when they got to where they were going. I remember I bought him a Swiss Army knife because he had lost his.

The wake was fascinating. Cops, were everywhere, a gangster or two, labor union leaders, the owners of the the largest circulation newspaper in New England. More people than I have ever seen at a regular person's wake or funeral. My dad knew a lot of people.

No on tried to jump into my father's casket, which is why no one was shot to death at his wake.

Mary was a little unhappy though. Unhappy with me. My little sister and older brothers were good at "handling the crowds" I guess, so that was going to be their job on the day of the wake. Mary and I just had to pick out the casket a day before the wake. I remember she was smoking a cigarette in the casket presentation room, You could smoke anywhere back then. In a crowded movie theater the ashtray was built right into the arm of the chair, just like on the commercial airliners. You could not get away from cigarette smoke. Looking back, it is odd that I didn't care

I remember my Aunt Fran blowing smoke right into my face as she spoke to me in that soft voice she had, and it seemed, I don't know, almost sexual. Maybe this is why smoke didn't bother me.

They are all dead now, even my sexy smoking aunt. It is just myself and brothers and sisters. Incidentally, after my father and mother passed, I no longer attend wakes. I will attend funerals, I will drive to graveyards. I will not go to wakes.

My sister Mary and I have endured a log-running feud over the casket that day. I wanted a dark walnut, conservative casket. But she actually discovered a casket the same color as my father's Cadillac, "That would be what he would want, she said, puffing away on her cigarette. "He loved that car."

I said, "Then why don't we just bury him in the f^^king car. The casket she wanted to place his body in looked like a carnival ride, But I had to admit, the dark walnut box looked like a wealthy giant's cigar humidor

A few years ago, I was on my way down the coast to Florida and I stopped in at Mary's house for a night's sleep, We were having a cup of coffee, when the subject of my father's casket came up. That was a flimsy casket, she said. "Not like the metal one I wanted. I agreed metal lasts longer in the ground than wood. Then she said. "You know, I bet the bugs got to him within a week." I asked her if that was what she was afraid of - bugs. She was.

I told he that people in wood caskets are wrapped in heavy ply plastic from head to toe and it is bug proof. (this was untrue) I said this was done at the funeral home before the casket was taken to the cemetary.She was so relieved, she kissed me. She had been worrying all these years about my father and the bugs. It was almost like my sister believed there was a way to get around the bug part.

Well, actually there is.

Cremation. I told her about my living will, how when my time came it was do-not-reinstate all the way. I don't even want antibiotics. No wake. No funeral. No nothing. Just the crematorium, dump my ashes into the Atlantic and call it a day. I am pretty sure you have to purchase a pine casket from the death merchants though.

My sister, said that ashes in the Atlantic is kind of cliche' don't you think?

I said, "Sure it is but I'll be gone, I won't be embarrassed,

She said, "What about your family though?"