After I finished helping my sister put the photos out around the room, I sat on the couch and looked at mom. She looked like she was taking a nap. She really looked great.
In the ceiling of the room there were three colored lights positioned to shine on her, in a triangle with the point farthest from the wall her casket was alongside. The short legs of the triangle were probably three feet on a side, and the long side was probably six feet or more. The two points on the long side were blue, and the other was red. I remembered this method, or a variation thereof, from my stage lighting classes as a theatre student.
The funeral home was called the Leak Memory Chapel. It was totally quiet. I don’t know if I can say that the whole place sounded hushed and reverent, but it did, somehow. After a few minutes of examining the lights and looking at anything but mom’s body, the funeral home guy came in to put mom’s jewelry on.
He and my sister talked back and forth about which wrist to put her bracelet on and whether or not she had pierced ears. I snapped the above picture of them doing this, and then I knew for sure that I needed a drink.
I grabbed the little plastic cups that they had next to a pitcher of water, slopped some water and a few ice cubes in, snatched up a peppermint, and walked quickly outside. I opened my car, splashed a healthy measure of whiskey into my glass, and greedily drank a big gulp. I felt guilty. I didn’t want anyone to see me relying on alcohol, but I was operating at the limits of my abilities.
I pretended to be checking out the graveyard adjacent to the funeral home as I drank the rest of my whiskey, then munched on the peppermint to try to hide my breath. I grabbed a coffee on the way back into the building in the coffee lounge. I wasted a few minutes in the coffee lounge snapping photos of their certifications and a painting of Mr Leak himself. I knew I needed to not hide forever, so I started to wander back out of the coffee lounge. I caught sight of a sign that said “Out of respect to the families, please do not remove coffee”, and I ignored it.
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