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Posts tagged ‘Holiday’

Oct 29

37 Comments

Games of the Dead and Dying

I drove my truck back to the home. My home. The funeral business ran out of the basement. I figured Mrs Anderson had a few days, tops. That Mr Anderson was a weenie. She always said so, when we was stuck between her calico sheets. I’d talk him into sending his wife off in style.

My basement had been empty for a month.Them two other jack legs in town stole people who rightfully belonged to me. Old McSweeney beat me to that monster of a wreck out Highway Nine. Five people died, and he claimed every one by the time I got there.

Him and his dumb ass name. McSweeney’s Palace of Eternal Rest. I don’t understand why people try to dress up death with flowers and perfume and visions of the happy hereafter. It’s all going to rot in the end.

And, that other one, that I-talian, he charges everybody for services he don’t even do. Why, I once saw him switch out a fancy casket for a pine box right there at the hole. I think he sold that casket a dozen times. Swindles them all, right when they’re the most vulnerable.

They deserved to be toyed with in the worst way. Both of them.

I grabbed my jug and headed back out to the ambulance. Squealed out of my driveway, my siren blaring all through town. Past Old McSweeney. I gave that I-talian the finger for good measure.

They jumped in their ambulances and followed me, hoping for at least one corpse at the end of the chase. That I-talian even rammed my back bumper one time as we shot over the hill out of town. I floored the gas and left them in the dust. Whatever my business woes, I always had the best ride.

When they caught up to me, I was sitting down by the river. Slugging moonshine out of a jam jar and watching the light dance on the water.

If nobody would cooperate and die, at least we undertakers had our games we liked to play.

Welcome to The Undertaker Series, a set of stories inspired by my father. He told me a story late one night, on our trip to Tennessee. If this is your first visit, please click here to go back to the beginning.

Mwuh-hahahahahahahaha!!

Oct 28

52 Comments

The Undertaker Always Calls on Halloween

It’s my favorite holiday. All Hallows Eve. People laugh all nervous when I say that, ’cause they don’t know what to do with me. To them, I am the personification of death.

I’m an undertaker.

Hard times, these. Two other funeral homes within range of my small town, and this valley don’t yield enough death. I compete with them, you know. For the bodies. Someday, somebody might come up with a better way, but in 1929, I do what I have to do to put food on the table.

Last week, I visited the bedside of a dying woman. My good friend Mrs Anderson. She was eat up with the cancer. I could see it, running along the skin under her skull. Almost didn’t recognize her.

I wore my best suit. The black one. And, I took a rooster for the family. Freshly killed by my hand. Wringing necks is my specialty. I don’t have a problem picking them up by the head and swinging them round til they’re dead.

When I walked through their front door carrying its carcass, I wiped my hands on my pants leg to make sure I got off all the blood. Families, they don’t like to see blood.

They didn’t notice. People grieving don’t see much. There’s a cloud hangs over them, this breathing thing that waits to take their loved one away.

I seen it. Lots of times.

Especially on All Hallows Eve.

Mrs Anderson was spread out on the bed, under a gas lamp. Her eyes was all sunk into her head, but she still knew me. Still held out her hand when I leaned on the quilt she made.

I knowed you’d come.

She whispered it. In rasps. But, I understood her. We always had a direct line of communication. Hand signals and knowing looks and such.

Yeah. I knew her.

Often.

When I left, I pulled her husband aside.

I’m so sorry. Won’t be long now.

I reckon not. He looked at the wide boards of the floor.

You send somebody for me. Straightaway when she breathes her last. I don’t want nobody else touching her.

Those boys from across town have been by. Making noises.

I pulled him into a corner. They won’t take care of her. Not like I can. You come get me, you hear?

When I stepped off the front porch, I knew I said enough to scare him into making the right call. To me.

The Undertaker Supreme.

Welcome to The Undertaker Series, a set of stories inspired by my father. He told me a story late one night, on our trip to Tennessee. This series puts my spin on the whole thing.

Mwuh-hahahahahahahaha!!

Oct 27

31 Comments

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

Dad has two retirement hobbies, both of which are work. 1. He refinishes antiques and foists them on people; and 2. He works for a funeral home.

Actually, he just quit the funeral home. For the second time. I’m convinced he’ll go back, but I don’t want to think about that right now.

On our trip to Tennessee, he told me stories about undertakers. About funeral homes. About dead people.

We were sitting in the living room of some people he knew from eons ago and hadn’t seen in decades. He just drove up to their house in the dark and knocked on the door and said, “Here I am!! Huh!!”

And, he whipped out this story about death and dying.

I’m not going to tell Dad’s story for Halloween. Not exactly.

But, in the coming days, I am going to put my own riff on it. Because, you know me.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Jul 5

23 Comments

Blasting Fireworks in the Cemetery

It always honors me when friends like Alice let me participate in family traditions. The cemetery fireworks for Eva Fair Guess (b. 1916; d. 1986) are the closest I’ll ever come to knowing a woman who must’ve been a spit-fire.

The cemetery where she’s buried is near Alice’s childhood Tara in Denmark, South Carolina. Situated on a quiet country road, this old, lovingly maintained place is one giant rectangle clear cut from the surrounding forest.

In the rapidly fading light, we pulled into the cemetery on the 4rd of July, with me noting all of the “Guess” monuments scattered here and there. They whispered: “guess who I was?”; “guess what I did with my life?”; “guess where you’ll be before you know it?”.

We parked behind Eva’s tombstone. She loved the 4th of July, and every year the family visits her grave to blast Roman candles in her honor. One by one, we took a turn in honoring a woman they loved by giving her something colorful, explosive and lively. As the light faded, the hues grew richer, and the noise mingled with the crickets and tree frogs to form a symphony in her honor.

When I imagine Eva, I hear belting laughter behind the staccato bursts in the sky. She must’ve been as colorful, explosive and lively as the tradition she’s inspired. As we finished, one by one they left the spent Roman candle holder on her grave in the form of a cross. Lain lovingly on the ground, those cylinders strung together surpassed spent leftovers; they became a more winning tribute than flowers ever could, and a gentle reminder to us that life is fleeting.

Thanks to Alice, Eva is someone I wish I could’ve known. I hope I do her proud by living life in blasts of resplendent color and light.

This post is part of a series that celebrates my friendship with Alice Guess as she moves to Baton Rouge, LA. If this is your first visit, please click here and read forward. Thank you for reading and sharing your stories here.

May 13

52 Comments

The Mother of All Dreams

Dreams are shifty, shimmering beings. Absent when I sleep. Stalking me when my eyes are open. My imagination is my waking dream, a piece of me that can infiltrate a conversation and bring it to a halt, can capture my attention and fragment it, can sew unrelated things together, make them one.

It’s trite to say I have a dream.

Lots of mothers dream about their children before they meet them. Mothers throughout time snagged the lives of their offspring in the stardust of a comet. Knew who the butterballs of flesh and smiles would grow to become. Mapped the pattern of their lives in the chambers of their hearts. Blessed the ambitions and visions of their children when none of it turned out the way they dreamed.

Most of my close friends are mothers. I watch them juggle everything with half a hand, and I admire them more than I ever tell them. So much, in fact, that I promised myself I would send each of them a card this year for Mother’s Day.

Life had other dreams for me. I failed.

To the ladies in my life who are mothers: Happy Mother’s Day. You have listened with patience to my recounting of my singular dream more than was ever your calling. Even as it has grown and mutated, as people have laughed behind their hands at my zeal, you haven’t once discouraged me. In fact, several of you stepped up to read me the riot act when I wanted to quit.

Thank you for never giving up on me, for making time in your insane schedules for a lost soul like me. I couldn’t dream some of the friends I have for fear they are too good to be true, that I would wake up alone. Here’s to you, my Mother friends, as your families fete you today.

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