I’ve never liked the idea of a viewing. The idea of people filing past my dead body is disturbing to me—like strangers rummaging through my personal items at a garage sale. Considering that scientists have done studies to see if you spill less coffee walking forward or backward and why older men have big ears (I’m not making this up), I’m sure someone has done research to see if the practice of displaying the dead is psychologically valuable or damaging.
I can see that there might be a benefit to the tradition, as I’ve read that it provides finality to those left behind. I understand this. Because of the nature of the car accident, my mother’s casket was closed. A part of me desperately wanted to pry open the box and see if she really was inside.
Wendy turned her attention to me as I approached the casket. I looked down at my father’s lifeless body. The person inside the silk-lined box didn’t look like my father. My father was never still. He was less matter than energy.
Nestled on top of the spray was a picture of my father, my mother, and me. I was wearing a tutu and ballet slippers. I remembered the moment. I had just come from the Nutcracker tryouts and we were going out for ice cream. As I looked at the picture, I felt a hand on my back.
“I’m sorry,” Wendy said. Her eyes were wet. Even more than mine. She handed me a tissue.
“Did you put together the table displays?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“Your father told me what he wanted.”
“Of course he did,” I said.
“I’ll bring everything back next week.”
A half hour later the man from the mortuary said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. We’ll soon be closing the casket and moving into the chapel for the service. If anyone would like to pay their last respects, now would be the time.”
I walked back up to the casket. I had returned to Utah to see my father, and here he was. This wasn’t the reunion I’d expected.
As I looked at him, I was suddenly flooded with memories, rising up in my psyche like groundwater. I remembered a hundred moments together, the times he held my tiny hand on walks, the magic of Christmas morning, his slipping the frosting from his birthday cake onto my plate when my mother wasn’t looking. I remembered him tossing me in the air as I screamed with delight and demanded it again and again until his back hurt.
Tears streamed down my face. For the first time since I learned of his death, I felt the anguish of grief, just as I had with my mother. I didn’t want to hurt like that again. I wanted to bolt from the place. I wanted to run all the way back to New York. I took a deep breath and said, “Rest in peace, Dad. I hope you find peace.”
I grabbed another tissue from a box next to the casket. As I turned back, I saw that almost everyone in the room was looking at me. I was embarrassed to suddenly be the center of attention. I quickly moved away.
Someone else came forward—an older woman I had never seen before. It was obvious that she was deeply grieving. But even in her grief, she moved with elegance. She was exceedingly thin, pretty, with short, dark hair pulled back tightly, exposing the graceful curvature of her forehead. Her high-boned cheeks were streaked with mascara and her eyes, even with the pain they carried, were beautiful, large and deep set. She was immaculately dressed, like the well-heeled women from the West Village. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in her later years.
The woman reached into the casket and gently touched my father’s arm. For a moment she just looked at him. Then she leaned forward, whispered something in his ear, and kissed his cheek. She slid a book into the casket, then stepped back. I turned to ask Wendy who the woman was, but she was already on the other side of the room. Actually, I was more curious to find out what the book was and why she thought he needed it.
The man from the mortuary looked around to see if anyone else was coming forward, and then he and his associate closed the top half of the casket. There was an audible gasp of emotion. And just like that, my father was gone.
CHAPTER nine
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live… I’d type a little faster.
—Isaac Asimov
The dark-suited men from the mortuary rolled the casket into the chapel, followed by a small procession led by Wendy and me. There was no other family. My father had one sister, but she had come down with MS and had passed away several years prior. I had missed that funeral.
To my amazement the chapel was filled to capacity and the dividers at the back of the room were open to accommodate the overflow. At each of the doors people were handing out programs or ushering mourners inside. One of them handed me a program as I entered the chapel.
“Who are all these people helping?” I asked Wendy.
“They’re from the Sugar House Rotary Club,” she said. “Your dad was a member.”
Everyone stood as we entered the chapel and remained standing until we had walked to the front pew and sat down just a few yards from the casket and the lectern above it. After we were seated a man walked forward wearing the robe of a pastor.
“Good morning,” he said. “My name is Dave Nelson. I’m the pastor of this church. We’ve gathered here today to celebrate the life of a great man. Or, I should say, a man’s life lived greatly. The attendance here today speaks volumes to the kind of life Robert Book lived.
“In Ecclesiastes, the preacher taught, ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.’
“Today is a time for us to weep and mourn. But not for long. Our Savior counseled, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms;… I go there to prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’ ”
The pastor looked out over the congregation. “We can only hope there are many books in Robert’s room.” There was a soft chorus of pious laughter.
“We are comforted to know that Robert Book is not alone. He was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Celeste. He will be followed in death by all of us. As we still have time, let us use it wisely and live such that our deaths may too be sweet. May God bless you with his eternal peace.”
The pastor was followed by a soloist, a thirtysomething woman with a beautiful, operatic voice. She sang the hymn “How Great Thou Art.”
The reading of the obituary was done by Wendy. She was, as I expected, emotional, and had difficulty getting through the short reading, even though she’d written the obituary herself. I think she’d planned on saying more but was too emotional to continue, so she returned to her seat instead.
After Wendy sat down, the woman from the viewing—the well-dressed one who had approached the casket after me—walked up to the lectern. I looked down at the program to see who she was. Her name, appropriately, was Grace.
It was immediately clear to me that she knew my father well, as she spoke of things I didn’t know about him. She ended her eulogy by reading a quote from one of my father’s favorite authors.
“The author John Steinbeck wrote,” she said, looking down at a piece of paper, “ ‘It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.’ ” She looked up. “There is no pleasure in our farewell. Robert’s death is a loss to all who knew him.” She furtively glanced down at me then back out at the crowd. “He was, simply, one of the finest men I’ve ever known. It was an honor to be counted among his many friends.” She teared up. “Godspeed, my dear one.” She slowly turned and walked back to the chair she’d risen from.