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“Mom!” I’ll hear my sister call, “Where are those earrings grandpa gave you?!” or “Where did you put that scarf?”.

I am glad that they are finding ways to get through this, but I wish they wouldn’t do that.

I got up and pulled on a pair of pants. It’s no use bucking for more sleep, I’m on the foldout in the main room, they’re going to wake me up eating in the adjacent dining room anyway.

My dad and his partner Steve had prepared muffins, fruit, and turkey bacon for everyone. We all sat down and ate breakfast. My sister looked like she had been crying when she came to the table, and was already wearing her nice clothes. We talked about how much she likes turkey bacon. Chuck and I agreed that real bacon is where it’s at.

After breakfast I showered and got ready to go. As I suspected, I was done and ready with about 45 minutes to spare. Steve appeared in a towel and showed me which remotes operate the TV, then disappeared back into the bedroom to dress. I watched the History Channel for a bit through sleepy eyes that felt like they had sand in them.

Eventually everyone was ready and it was time to go. We all piled into Chuck’s SUV and drove back over to the Leak Memory Chapel, arriving right on time at 8:30 for the 9:00 service. Once again, I was in my suit and sunglasses. No one seemed to mind.

We went inside and I met the preacher who was to conduct the service. He was tall, stooped, and smiling. He wanted to know if I wanted to say anything. I said that I didn’t know if I did or not, so I thought I’d best not.

“I find that unless someone feels they must speak, it’s best not to,” he nodded, smiling.

I thanked him, and went off to get a cup of coffee. When I returned with it, my sister wanted to know where I got it. I showed her the coffee lounge. She cornered me about the sunglasses.

“You’re at your mother’s funeral.” she said.

“These sunglasses are one of the only reasons I am getting through this at all.” I told her. She let it go.

We went together back toward the room where mom was, arm in arm. When we got there, the preacher was asking everyone to shut up. He said a few words, and then gave my sister a small brown wooden cross as a token of something or other. He said the immediate family should follow him and the pallbearers should stand over there. We followed him.

There had been some consternation the day previous over who would be the pallbearers. At first I figured I would do it, but as it got to be the morning of the actual service, I decided I didn’t want to. I don’t know why I didn’t want to, I just didn’t. We found some other guys from the funeral party to handle it; yet another thing that was orchestrated by the ever-helpful Chuck.

The preacher led us into the main chapel where we sat in the front row. Starting at the aisle, it was Chuck, my sister, me, my grandfather’s wife Ms. Maurice, and my grandpa. My sister switched with Chuck so she could be next to me. She was holding a hanky and that little wooden cross in her lap.

They wheeled mom in.

The preacher walked up to the raised area at the business end of the chapel, and sat down on a chair off to the side as the organist finished the piece he was playing, which was about two seconds. Then the preacher stood back up and addressed us from the pulpit. He started off by saying that he didn’t intend to talk a lot about Jesus because he wanted to let Jesus shine through in the life that mom lived.

He had a point, mom sure loved her some Jesus. He smiled as he described all the ways that mom had loved Jesus and been a good christian. He recited many verses of scripture. He really had a lot to say about Jesus. I expected him at some point to just devolve into sentences consisting only of the word “Christ”.

“Christ christey christ christ!” He said in my mind, shaking his head. I smiled at this, then bit my lip to keep from smiling, then I realized where I was and I didn’t have to bite my lip any more. The preacher caught me smiling for a split second, and smiled back. I guess he thought I was smiling at the awesome power of Jesus.

I really thought all the Jesus business was overdone, but I kept reminding myself that this is exactly what mom would have wanted. I said all the prayers and went through all the motions.

Eventually he took a break and my aunt took the pulpit to talk about mom. She started off with a joke about how she could sense mom over her shoulder as she was writing it, telling her what to leave out. The preacher smiled hugely at the ceiling at this, and there was a little laughing. My aunt spoke for six minutes, because that’s how long the preacher had alotted for her.

Eventually she sat down, and we got back to the Jesus talk. The preacher was building himself up into quite a finale, his arms spread wide, his hands going ever higher with each new declaration of god’s greatness. Finally, it was over. They wheeled mom out through a side door and the pallbearers put her into the hearse. We left the chapel and regrouped outside in the lobby where everyone came up to us one by one to say how nice the service had been.

My roommates were there. I wanted to get out of there really badly, and it looked like things were thinning out, so I grabbed Chuck’s car keys from him and made for the parking lot. I got my stuff out of his car, piled it into my roommate’s, gave him his keys back, and split.

We had a few hundred miles to drive to where mom was going to be buried, next to her mother.

She pulled her big Ford Explorer into the parking deck, and swooped into the handicap lot near the door. She misjudged the distance, and bonked into a giant concrete pillar at the end of the parking space, giving us a significant jolt.

“We’re here!” she proclaimed.

I cooked rice in that cooker once, burned it, and could never get it out of the bottom of it properly, so I didn’t use it again. I told her it was still going strong, though. I’m so inconsiderate. I’m sorry mom, I miss you. Thanks for the rice cooker.

Some of my oldest friends came out to see me, even though we haven’t been in good touch over the years thanks to me being slack about it. It really meant a lot to me that they would do that. My roommates Sam and Mellie also turned up. It was great.

I began to notice during the viewing the distinct differences between the way people talked to my sister and me. They shared memories with her, cried, and generally stirred up as many emotions as possible. I was grateful to talk to anyone who wanted to talk about anything but my deceased mom. I tried to smile through the few people who wanted to remember her in a tearful soliloquy, but most people seemed to realize that I wasn’t hip.

After the viewing I really wanted to go out and eat with my friends, but my Dad and his significant other Steve had dinner planned. I didn’t want to disappoint, so we all went over. It was really nice, Dad and Steve really know how to entertain.

Afterwards, Sam and Mellie and I went out for a beer at the bar I hung out in when I was living in Montgomery. IT was good to get out and not think about family any more than necessary. I kept it to one beer, though, since the service was the following morning at 9am and Dad was promising to get us all up at 6:30 since we had so many people to get through the showering and dressing process. By my calculations, we didn’t need that much time, but I was too tired to argue the point, and I figure it’s better to be ready early than late.

I couldn’t sleep. I never sleep well in unfamiliar surroundings. I have a ritual that I follow to go to bed, and if I have to deviate from it because I am in a strange place then I take forever to go to sleep.

I thought about mom. Cars drove by and cast oddly-angled patches of light on the walls that roamed around over Dad’s many paintings. I listened to a book on my ipod until I felt tired enough to sleep, but I lay awake after I took it off for a long time. I can never sleep anywhere but my own bed at night.

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.

Eventually I gave up trying to help and just stared off into space through my sunglasses, which had by this time become my security blanket. I tended to cry if I thought about Mom too much, so I just kept them on, the better to fake it. I watched a pretty redhead walk by.

“Hey Annie!” a sales clerk called to her.

“Hey!” she said brightly back, going about her department store business.

I bought a plain white oxford shirt, and my sister settled on a muted outfit that wasn’t too old lady. Annie was our sales clerk when we paid for our clothes.

“So what are y’all doing for the rest of the day?” she smiled conversationally.

I crossed my arms. Boy, was she barking up the wrong tree. “We’re just doing family stuff,” my sister said.

We left Belk and went back to mom’s house. I got dressed and wrote a bit about Mom. This made me cry for a few minutes, but I got it together before anyone came to get me. Eventually it was time to leave.

We had an hour plus drive to Montgomery for the viewing at 5pm. I had to drive my car so my friends could take it back to Atlanta, so I drove alone. I don’t remember much about the drive, I was in a daze. So much so, in fact, that I missed my exit and had to take back roads through town. I learned to drive in Montgomery, though, so I knew where to go.

I had no idea if I was going to make it through the viewing. For probably the hundredth of ten thousand times I praised whatever gods there are that my sister has her husband Chuck to help take care of things, because I was totally useless. Normally during a crisis I pride myself on being clearheaded, but this time I wasn’t at all. I just didn’t want to think about anything. Chuck was there for my sister, and it’s a good thing because all I wanted to do was run away.

I had my sunglasses, though, and a bottle of Maker’s in the back seat for courage. I knew I was going to catch heat for wearing the sunglasses throughout the proceedings, but I also knew I wasn’t going to take them off and look people in the eye.

I pulled up to the funeral home.

I found Chuck and my sister. They pointed me where to go. I went inside, sunglasses on. A tiny old lady pointed me toward the correct room, and I went in. Suddenly I was in the room with the casket and my mom’s body, and I was overwhelmed with an “Oh shit…” feeling. I almost lost it, but I busied myself helping my sister place photos around the room and I got myself under control.

I started planning a way to get back out to the car to hit that bottle of whiskey before people started turning up and wanting me to talk to them.

Mom flew out to California to participate in the Run Walk years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003.

It happens for everyone all the time, of course. When you stop talking, the echoes die away. When you leave a room, people start to forget what color your shirt was. Living people refresh those little memories all the time as they come back around, but mom’s little memories aren’t being refreshed anymore.

I took pictures around her room when I got here yesterday, so I’ll always know exactly how her things were, the way she left them, down to the wrinkles in her comforter that she threw aside to go to the hospital.

I went inside, told him that his sign wasn’t on, and started looking around the shelves. He said the power had gone off just a moment before and that must have been what turned the sign off. I eyeballed a bottle of Knob Creek briefly on the recommendation of a friend, but it was $10 more than the adjacent fifth of Maker’s and not knowing ahead of time whether it was $10 better, I played it safe.

I paid, got in the car. My brother in law and sister were in the front seat, him at the wheel, and we pulled back onto the two lane county road. We were going along well, but my sister had to pull over to throw up. She apologized between heaves, but of course there was nothing to apologize for.

Eventually we made the trip through the back woods from my sister’s house to my mom’s. My sister needed to lie down, so she did. I went in to talk to her. She said that she had always been irritated with mom for being selfish, but that toward the end of her life she had really tried to make changes. I am unfamiliar with that facet of my mom, as she always treated me like a prince.

I guess there really is a big difference in the way a mom treats a daughter and a son, at least in my case.

We’ve now been through a lot of decision making. What should we dress her in? What jewelry should she wear, and how will we get it off of her after the service? The funeral home says she needs underclothes, so we’ve sent them along via my brother in law. Are these pearls real or fake? What is involved in an Estate sale? Who will take mom’s cat, Punkin? Should my aunt take the dining room table? What will we do with all this christmas china? And on and on…

We are all issuing convictionless mandates: “We need to just get a box and put all these pictures in it.”, or “You’ve got to drive, I don’t know if I can handle it”, or “Well I have to write what I am going to say at the service.”

My aunt just called back to me that the guy running the service has cut her speaking time down to 6 minutes. She feels cramped, she has 35 years of stuff to say.

I’m trying to decide if I should shave my beard or not. It’s itchy and spring is coming. Should I play a song at the service? Will there be a piano there? We don’t know. I know mom would like that in a way, if only because Sir Elton played so famously at Princess Diana’s funeral, but I don’t know if I can or should. The only song I can think of to sing isn’t really to my mom, it’s to a girl who doesn’t love me. It doesn’t seem very appropriate.

Speaking of appropriate, how much of these proceedings will be appropriate times for me to be having a drink? No one seems to know.