What will be your last out fit? What will you wear to your funeral? (number 2)
A week went by, I began to think hard about what Pop's 90th birthday would entail. I thought about what sort of party could I arrange that would work in a hospital. Then on Thursday morning, one week and one hour after I had last saw my Pop, my mobile rang, that's cell phone to you yanks.
Mum on the other end saying "it's Pop, he's gone.' I don't remember the rest of the conversation, just a feeling of non-reality. Feeling as if the world was fake, or transparent. It's hard to put into black and white. My Mum arrived at my house about 40 minutes later. The rest of the day went in a flurry of tears, shock, more country driving, and more shock. We arrived in 'Helldinin' that evening about 6pm.
Nurses were as usual having tea. The hospital was quiet, but elderly patients were still wandering around doing what ever they do. We were lead to where Pop's body lay, which was just a normal hospital room with the air conditioning set on the lowest setting. Being a backwater hick town, they don't even have a proper cool room for people who have passed on.
I sat outside the room for the first few minutes, my Mother went in to have time alone with her father. I was worried about her, how she was in there, if she was ok. In her line of work she sees dead bodies all the time, so she is used to handling/moving bodies around in hospitals. However, this was her father. So of course it was totally different. I was also worried about myself, I had never seen anyone dead apart from on the internet, or on strange late night tv. So all manner of thoughts crossed through my mind, was he going to look different, would he smell bad, how would I react, should I plan my reaction so that I avoid any bad reaction.
I was in the beginning of grief, that denial is so strong. I was still thinking to my Kritikal self, they are so negligent in this shitty little hospital, that they obviously have mistaken someone else for my Pop! It's not him in there, there has been a big mistake, and when I go in there, I will see that all is well, and then we will have to go find Pop.
A few moments passed and my Mother came out from the room. She asked me if I wanted to go in, if I was ok, and if I was ready. I nodded and went in. My heart sank. I saw that it was my Pop, since he had his tattoos in the right places. His color was gone, and I knew he was gone also, but I sat next to him on the bed, and waited for him to speak.
Any moment now, and he will say something. We sat in that room for maybe 20minutes. In quiet, in whisper, in silence.
We waited for the undertaker to arrive from Parrigon which is about an hour or so from Helldinnin and of course I have given this town a new name for reasons stated above. We met the undertaker and he was lovely, I am guessing an old time Mason, or maybe a traditional catholic, I don't know, but there was something religious about him, not in the church sense but in the cross every 't', dot every 'i' sense. He was good, but had a hand shake as cold as ice. My mother and I both saw both the irony and humor in that. After speaking to him for a while, we were somewhat clear on the steps that we were about to take, however the whole thing is a blurr.
Mum and I both then went in to say what seemed to me, to be the final good bye. I gently put a new beanie on Pop, and I heard him say to me in his funny irish accent, 'Give us a kiss love.' So I leaned over, kissed him on his cool cheek and said good bye. As I left from the hospital that night, I had to fight with all I had in me not to run back in, pick him up and take him with me, to safety, or to comfort, or to escape. I have no idea what I was thinking, but I hated leaving him there in that place, where they let him die.
That night we hardly slept and the next morning my older brother Sonny arrived at the hotel. It was a relief to see him, another familiar face, another person who would understand the pain that really only a family member, or I guess an extremely close friend could know. The next day or so went in another whirl of strange blurr. There is really no telling what exactly happened in those next days so I will move on to the reason why I began this post, and my question, what would you wear to your own funeral.
Organizing a funeral in this day and age should not be more confusing than death itself. Losing Pop has been confusing, and although I would like to get to the bottom of why the hospital staff let my Pop die, I was really shocked at the confusion of organizing a funeral. I am not going to get into all the red tape, the government's policies on what happens with a person's body, or what you can and can't do when you lose a member of your family. It's April 2011, and today it is still so difficult and so chaotic to organize a funeral. Maybe 100 years ago, it may have been easier, because family may have been able to make every decision without some rediculous governmental department breathing down your neck to make sure that you follow all the rules, and keep up to date with all the changes in policies, rules and regulations.
The whole grieving process would have been made so much less difficult if we could have all just got a shovel each, bought a plot of land, dug a hole, and laid him to rest. Now I know, some may find that harsh, maybe even a little revolting, but to my mind, I think it would have been better that way. To be able to grieve without interruption. I bet Pop would have preferred to be buried with his animals. He always had a little ceremony for every one of his animals when he lost one. He loved them and respected them, made a little plot for them, marked the ground and paid respect to that animal that probably bought him much love and companionship.
Once again, I digress. I do that a lot.
The viewing for Pop was at about 9am. I was there with a picture of him to go onto the casket. My mother and I were the only ones to view Pop, which is probably a good thing since he was laying in the casket in the Beanie I had placed on his head, and the hospital pajamas that he wore when he died.
My Pop died in a shitty little back water hospital, in the crappy pajamas I fought so hard to get him out of.
I hear you ask the question, 'why was he still in pajamas?' Well the answer to that is simple. We were told that he was in a neat shirt, and it was quite suitable for a viewing. I was fool enough to believe it.
The rest of the day only got worse. It got worse before it got better, and it was not until the day was completely over, that I was able to go home, to my comfortable, usual, normal norm, that I could come unglued. And that is what I did.
Once again, I will ask you, what will you wear at your own funeral?
Kritikal.
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