StL Day 2

Death, it turns out, is surprisingly complicated.

Yesterday we were at the funeral home by 830am to make the arrangements for my dad's funeral. The funeral home is, well, creepy. The people who work there are nice enough, but the affected tone of sympathetic seriousness was annoying me by 10 minutes into the process. I understand why this tone is employed, and I'm sure it's the right one for the vast majority of people, but I personally would have preferred a pragmatic, businesslike approach. But I'm sure most people would perceive that as callous.

Anyway, it turns out that there are a million decisions that have to be made in this process. My mom, who is still somewhat numb/in shock, was not in a place to want to be making lots of decisions about things. So, my cousin and I helped with that as much as we could. A partial list of decisions you have to make is:

- what services do you need the funeral home to provide?
- is there going to be a wake (now apparently referred to as a "visitation")?
- If so, for how long?
- In which room in the funeral home?
- What will the deceased be wearing?
- what flowers (if any) will you have?
- what will happen at the visitation? Do you need any ancillary equipment?
- Is there going to be a church service?
- When will that service be?
- Will there be an obituary?
- If so, what will it say?
- When will it run?
- Who will be pallbearers?
- Should we be picked up at the house or at the church?
- What should the prayer cards look like?
- What should they say?

And then, when you've gotten through a bunch of stuff like that, you get taken down into the basement. For the casket tour.

Ew.

So there you are, in a room full of caskets. In fairness, the guy was good about not pressuring us in any perceptible way, at least not until it came time to decide about a vault. But first, we wandered around the room looking at all these different caskets, and by the end of the tour I was convinced I wanted cremation. Because you wander around the room going "OK, dad isn't going to give a shit which box he's in. But he's my dad. We can't dump him in the ground in any old thing." It can drive you crazy, and I don't want anyone doing a casket tour for me.

In the end, we went with a metal casket, toward the lower end of the price range, but not at the bottom.

Then, The Undertaker starts asking us which kind of vault we want. Not that we have to buy one, of course, but here are all the different types, and why you might want to choose this particular one, or that particular one, or maybe this othe-

"Wait," I said, "Why exactly do we need a vault?"

"Well," says The Undertaker, "technically you don't need one since Michael is going to be buried in a Catholic cemetary, and the Catholics don't require one. But there are a lot of reasons to consider it."

And so he begins with Line of Reasoning #1: the casket will be under 6-8 feet of earth, which is going to put pressure on it. Also, water will slowly eat away at it, until 50 years from now it may be more or less gone completely. I mean, if you think about a car, if you left it outside for 50 years, it'd be pretty much rusted away. A vault will protect the casket from that kind of pressure and slow degradation.

Well, I thought, that's a pretty compelling argument- if my intention is to dig my dad up 50 years from now to say hi, and maybe play a round or two of pinochle. Otherwise, I don't get it. Clearly, the skepticism shows on my face.

So, he goes into Line of Reasoning #2: the dirt that the casket is in will have a tendency to shift over time, especially once it's been dug up and put back in, and the casket may drift. Sealing the casket in a vault will help provide weight and stability that will ensure Michael doesn't end up running into the next grave over.

Hmm. My problems with this line of reasoning include the following: (1) IT'S THE FUCKING GROUND! It's not like the coffins are sloshing around down there like rubber fucking ducks in a bathtub. (2) Even if dad does end up sidling up to Jane Doe in the next grave over, seriously, what the hell else does he have to do down there other than make friends with the neighbors? (3), let's say he does shift 2 feet to the left over the next 50 years. Going back to Line of Reasoning #1, unless we plan to dig him up 50 years from now, WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO KNOW THAT???

"I'm sorry," I say to The Undertaker, "I'm just having a lot of difficulty understanding what the value is."

So The Undertaker, in a last desperate gambit, reaches for Line of Reasoning #3: well, the movement of the casket over time will disturb the earth at the surface, which will make it harder for the cemetary staff to maintain the grounds. The vault helps the cemetary keep maintenance costs down.

Ah, well gee, that's really persuasive. Why don't we spend a couple thousand dollar's of my mom's fixed income in order to lower the cemetary's cost of operations by $1 a year. At a 10% discount rate, assuming my dad is in the ground from now to infinity, that means the net present value of the additional costs the cemetary will incur because I'm a stubborn, cheap bastard is $10. So I apologize on behalf of my family to all the hundreds of other future people who will someday be buying plots in Resurrection cemetary, since they will be bearing their individual fraction of the $10 in the cost of their plots.

"I don't think we'll be needing a vault, thank you," I say to The Undetaker, "but thanks for explaining the issue."

Trying hard not to show disappointment, he leads us back upstairs, to where it now seems less creepy, thanks to the Casket Room. We finish making all our decisions, and then The Undertaker draws up our invoice. Fortunately, they will take a life insurance policy as collateral, and they file all the necessary paperwork with the life insurance company, which will then pay the funeral home's invoice and send the balance of the policy to my mom.

From there, we picked up my brother Willie and went to Uncle Bill's for some greasy spoon breakfast with mom. That was a nice respite, because from there we had to go to the cemetary.

At the cemetary, you also sit down with someone, in this case an Irish Catholic identical twin with a slightly off-color sense of humor, and he walks you through the million decisions you have to make at the cemetary, which include the following:

- one plot, which coffins eventually stacked, or two plots side-by-side? Or more, if others want to be buried nearby?

- lawn-level stone, or upright monument?

- graveside service, or in a chapel?

- if graveside, tent/chairs or no tent/chairs?

- where in the cemetary? Buying a plot, Mike Finnegan informs us, is like buying a house. Location matters, and significantly impacts pricing.

"Can we buy some plots and flip them? Or has the market for that tanked too?" Fortunately, I say this only inside my own head. By the way, is how I survive situations like this.

So we pile into "the company van" and get a tour of the cemetary, to see where single plots are available (we decided a single plot with my mom eventually going in on top). The first place looks decent enough, though it's the cheapest area since the road and the railroad tracks are right there. We keep moving.

The second place is also close to the railroad tracks. It's slightly more expensive since the road isn't right there. Mike tells us not to worry about the wooden temporary road thingy just to our left; the railroad accident that dumped toxic chemicals was right over there a couple weeks ago, and that wooden road is for the workers to get in and out of the area as they continue their cleanup.

A lot of this whole dying process seems silly, but I do draw the line at agreeing to bury my father (and eventually mother) in a Superfund site. Suddenly, being anywhere near the tracks is not attractive. We keep moving.

Eventually, we've made a circuit of the whole grounds, and we decide to go for a plot in the interior near a bunch of cops, former military, and local small businesspeople. A very middle-class neighborhood, not obviously near the site of any future hazardous chemical spills. We go back to the office, draw up all the paperwork, and pay. We leave the cemetary, and realize that we forgot to deal with the flowers at the funeral home, and head back there.

I am not thrilled to be back at the creepy funeral home, and am not looking forward to spending 7 hours there on Friday (family visitation 2-3, public visitation 3-9). The Undertaker brings us a book of flower arrangements to have at the visitation, and that's kind of where I shut down.

"OK," I say to Mom and Anne, "I just want to set expectations here by saying that I do not expect to have anything useful to add in the way of choosing flowers, and I'm looking to you guys to take the lead on this one."

In retrospect, I suppose I should have manned up a little more there, but I was tired of making decisions, and so were they, and so we ended up pretty much going with what was on the first page, which was a bunch of white roses and stuff. I know dad wouldn't care less, and I think all of us were headed that way quickly.

Flowers chosen, we headed out of there. All of us were in need of a nap. I hoped to take one, but ended up answering work emails and stuff online until it was time to take mom to dinner. We had great Vietnamese back in the neighborhood I grew up in, and then dropped mom off at home. Plaid came by and picked me up, and we went to Ted Drewes for the best frozen custard on earth. Our friend Janet met us, and we ended up trading stories in the parking lot of Ted Drewes until 2am. A long day, but a good way to finish it.

Now, we're off to go pick up my brother Mikie from the airport. Always an adventure with him, so the family fun will begin in earnest soon...