"The Funeral Pyre That Never Happened"

We're standing in the room where my mother-in-law, Fernanda, sleeps. The furniture in her own room was too big, towering over her, smothering, so she slept here.  And I needed to speak now or forever wonder if I should have.  Fernanda and one of my sisters-in-law, Lena, stood opposite me across the twin bed.  Like a face-off.

“I just wanted to tell you.” I started and stopped, feeling my inferior 25 years, facing this matriarch.  Her mouth was set with hardened grief.  How can a mother prepare to bury her only son? I looked down at the yellowish comforter. 

“Uh. Rob and I just happened to talk about his wishes a couple months ago. You know, in case he died before me.”

The irony.

Fernanda clutched the lapel of her blue housecoat with her left hand. Lena looked nauseous, her face paling while I faltered with what I needed to say next.  My lips for Rob's voice.

“He said he wanted to be cremated.” Fernanda muffled a squeak at my words and swayed.

“He said he wanted to be cremated in the open air, without a box around him, because he didn’t want to be trapped inside. Smothered. He wanted to be free. In the air.” My words stumbled to a stop. Fernanda had her Catholic hand over her Catholic lips. I imagined her thoughts. Her son ... burnt to ash? I didn't understand her visible revulsion, like she was repulsed with my morals. Were Catholics not cremated? Maybe not.

“Well.” I shook my head. I certainly didn’t want to fight for a funeral pyre -- something that wasn’t allowed here anyway. And she was so clearly horrified, I wanted to protect her from anything more traumatic. Though I wished I could honor Rob’s memory, give him exactly what he had wanted. I sighed and looked at the aged comforter again. And then to Fernanda’s eyes.

“It doesn’t matter." But it did. We weren't even married three years.  Maybe I didn't have a say in this. But I should. They knew him much longer than I.  Did they suffer more grief than me?(Snort.) No. Do they have the right to decide what happens to him?  Or do I?  Me.  I was his wife.

But she was his mother.

"We’ll bury him. I’d like a gravesite to visit.” And this much was true anyway.  I felt a twinge of remorse.  Do my wishes mean more than Rob's?  Fernanda and Lena breathed collectively and one of them patted my arm. I looked through the doorway to the hall.

~

Gerry, his other sister, pulled me aside.

“Valerie, do you think Rob would’ve liked to be laid out in his army Class A’s?”

I laughed and covered my mouth at the unexpectedness.

“No. Just his black suit.”

Fernanda, Gerry and Lena packed up a change of clothes for him in an overnight bag – as if this were somehow temporary. I slipped in a photo of the three of us: Rob and me and our daughter, Aubrey. We were sitting in the green throne chair. All of us shmooshed together. Last Easter. All dressed up. I wanted the picture with him, wherever he was going. I left instructions for the restoration artist to have it placed in Rob's breast pocket after he dressed the body.

At the wake, I asked the funeral director for Rob’s ring. I wanted to take that with me. I put it on my right thumb and clenched my hands in one big sweaty fist.  I bent, sobbing over them.

When I picked out the casket, I chose one with gleaming red cherry wood and the "Pieta" at every corner.  I liked how this mother's grief wailed out mine as well.  I didn't know if I wanted to view Rob's body or not.  Did I want to see a pale, grey version of the man I loved?  Would I feel drawn to kiss his stitched-closed lips and forever feel their coldness?  Could I take that as my last memory of him?

In the end the funeral director made that decision for me.  He insisted on a closed casket and I didn't dwell too long on why. I never did see Rob again.  Instead, I had a different last memory.

“Drive careful,” I had told him at the door.

“Always.” He leaned over and kissed me good-bye.

The fire red of his wooden resting place gleamed under the funeral parlor's lights, and a long strand of yellow rosebuds -- strung together to form a rosary -- ignited the top, so much like the pyre he wanted after all.

I love you. Always.