Jonathan's POZ Blog

So a combination of offhanded drug therapy, combined with a Benadryl for allergies and a whole Klonopin (I usually take half) for this lingering unease I can't seem to shake made their way through my bloodstream tonight. I played three rounds of my Heroes of Might and Magic III in bed, before the armies and wizards began to swarm from the screen, and my fingers itched.

I placed the laptop beside the bed, and slipped into exhausted sleep.

I am with my family, picking out caskets for my Father. Dad has been gone less than six hours, and no one has slept. We are shepherded into a warehouse of grief, where coffins of every size, shape, and material compete for attention. Metal ones, wooden ones, plain, embroidered. A huge, multicolored Jesus Face on one promises to gaze lovingly - or maybe accusingly- for all eternity, centimeters from the stiffened face of the departed.

Great idea, these showcases, especially for those who have not made it this far into the realm of “final arrangements.” They are all hideously expensive. Even the ones that are simply hideous. For reasons I can’t understand, Mom gravitates towards a blue metallic one in the far corner, with plush satin sheeting and a comfy pillow.

I do not point out that, whilst we were choosing Dad’s comfortable resting place, undertakers were forcing heavy gauge wire through his lower palate, and tying his jaw together. Suplergluing his eyes. Collecting blood as it pours from all orifices, replaced by something new and sparkly and tinted pink. This box had an innerspring, and no one wanted Dad to get a backache. I tag along, marveling at a level of surrealism I thought only existed in David Lynch films.

She likes it, the blue one. By “likes,” I mean she wept most openly over it.

Light blue satin lines it. Embroidered on the lid is a simple stencil of three birds flying in formation. A fourth bird had broken from the flock, and was flying in another direction. The message at the bottom was, simply, “…Going Home.”

Birds are flocking animals. They have an uncanny ability to find home. If a bird is breaking away from the flock and going somewhere else, well, that bird might be going to an awful lot of places.

Home is not one of them.

I opt not to share this Discovery Channel moment with my distraught family. Sometimes I think thoughts that are sort of funny, except that my heart is broken at the time.

And it hits me why Mom likes that casket so much. ”Likes” being a relative term.

It is the exact shade of blue as the Oldsmobile that Dad drove to work all those years. The thing she used to walk him to in the early morning chill, briefcase and neatly folded jacket on his arm. The thing she used to watch for from the front porch, dinner and hungry children waiting for it’s return at the end of a long day.

I remember my Mom's face, shroued by the thin sheer curtains in the Living Room, parting them to look down the driveway, looking for his car to pull in so that she could put the dinner rolls into the oven. You can't put the rolls into the oven before the car pulls in. They'll burn.

It is the steely conservative color of routine, of a necessary goodbye and an eager return. It is the required parting, and the anticipated return. It is the steady blue of the Aqua Velva dad always wore, without exception and without fail. It is all things blue, and reliable, and she is used to seeing him go in that.

Of course, it is some unconscionable price. A price Mom pays without a pause, tearing the check from her book of checks and handing it over to the carefully compassionate older man who grimly smiles at her. As if apologetic to take her money, the most distasteful part of his day.

I watch the exchange, and imagine at least seven things that were FAR more distasteful, going on in the sterile rooms beneath us. The rooms not decorated with antique furniture, with classical music playing in the background.

Yet he manages to take the money, brave soul. And we wait for the Family Viewing, sitting there in the “parlor” with our good clothes on, uncomfortable in Victorian chairs. I could have used a lemonade. We wait for Dad.

I wake up, gladly, sadly.

That’s more or less how it went down, and lucid though the dream was, I could not alter a single course of events. All roads led me to that wooden chair with the floral print, waiting in a carefully arranged and immaculate simulacrum of a home for my father’s corpse. All things there furnished to provide the semblance of color, the illusion of life. But all just missing the mark.

I pass through those moments again some nights. I think it’s the Benadryl. And I wake up, alone, usually soaked to the skin, clinging to a body pillow as though it were a life preserver. I lay there in the dark, waiting for the world to right itself. Waiting for that feeling of safety and relevance to kick in.

Sometimes it takes hours and hours and hours.