Who came up with this idea of the open casket service?

I truly hate open casket funerals. The poor soul, lying there so vulnerable in death, exposed to every eye, loving and lurid alike. It seems so very rude to me, this displaying of the dead, almost barbaric. It seems to me that the coffin should be closed, there should be some sort of privacy, out of respect. Uncle Bryce spent more than a year dying. The man lost every speck of personal privacy over the course of that year. It didn’t seem right to lay out his wasted body for everyone to inspect.

Oh, there is much I could say about the whole thing, the general process of final farewells and the specifics of my family’s particular rituals. I could write so much about how hypocritical I felt for returning to the Church only for a day or for crying when it was not my place. I could relate the difficulty of finding things to speak of to relatives who haven’t seen me for years and years, of having no children stories or husband stories or rising career stories to share. I could dwell on how dreadfully middle-aged all my contemporary cousins are looking these days, how strangely adult all those children have become. I could even detail the events which led to Donnal and Caroline’s latest outrage at a perceived snubbing by my aunt. (I would be willing to give a new widow the benefit of the doubt and assume that a personal invitation to the after-burial gathering simply slipped her rather distracted mind, but that’s just me.)

I could go on at length about any and all of these topics, but I haven’t the energy for it. Anyway, I think it best to limit my tendency to dwell on such things, so I will allow myself just a small amount of time to write on the events of yesterday.

I went with my parents. It was easiest for me that way. It was a bad day for them both. My father and mother had grown much closer to Aunt Lindsey (his youngest sister) and Uncle Bryce during the course of his illness. Papa had spent huge amounts of time with Uncle Bryce, taking him to and from work while Uncle Bryce was still able to travel, staying with him in case he needed anything. Later on Papa had just been there, for companionship, for whatever needed doing. Mom is less active, due to her own physical problems, but she was Aunt Lindsey’s comic relief. Aunt Lindsey has always been very stylish and socially active and, well, let’s face it, self-centered in the way of most attractive women who have demanded pampering all their lives. She needed someone like my mother, very practical and possessed of an irreverent soul, to call on after she’d gotten all the pity she could stand from her many friends. She could tell my mother the awful things and she didn’t have to be brave about them. Mom, for her part, could get away with saying the seemingly most inappropriate things and make Aunt Lindsey laugh despite herself.

The two couples, my city-social business-powerful uncle and aunt and my parents, seriously non-stylish and hopelessly middle-class, had nothing in common except blood and marriage and history. My aunt, my two cousins, and their wives sat in the first pew. My mother and father and I (in on a pass as it were) sat directly behind.

In my entire life I have only seen my father cry once before, and that time only a quiet tear that I myself had caused. (It stunned me at the time.) My father wept openly at the funeral. I have to remember that, whenever I am thinking harshly of him. There is a man underneath all his emotional ineptness, who feels even if he cannot express it. He is vulnerable despite all his crushing self-appointed authority. He is a good man too, who gives all that he can, in whatever way he can, and only hurts others because he cannot think outside his own limited view. One day, he too will die, and I will lean into the open casket to kiss him good-bye just as I kissed Uncle Bryce yesterday. By the time he dies, as difficult as he is now and as increasingly difficult as he is certain to become, I know I will be torn. I will be a twisted mix of my grief of losing someone I loved so much and the everpresent guilt and anger that he made it so difficult for me to love him openheartedly.

No number of words could ever explain to Papa how I feel about him. I realize now that he has not the emotional vocabulary to understand even if I had the maturity and language to explain. After the service and the burial and the gathering were all over I went to Papa and simply hugged him, holding on, not able to tell him the things I wish he could understand. I just told him that I loved him and held on tight. I hope it is enough.