I stand, breathing deeply to calm my nerves as warm water streams through my hair, down my back, and along the length of my legs before finding its way down the drain and into the sewers. From there? To a wastewater facility. I don’t know where it goes after that. Maybe it will ultimately evaporate and come down as rain. Maybe some of it will find its way back to me.
Dad would have liked this, enjoyed my telling him of my musings. Mom would have called it nonsense. They were polar opposites who somehow found each other, somehow made a life together. Forty-three years. One year and one day more than the number of years I’ve been alive.
They bickered. Oh, how they bickered. And yet, they were utterly devoted to one another. I grew up in a home of contrasts. Dad’s cluttered shelves of fantasy novels and Star Trek memorabilia. His Thursday night Dungeons and Dragons games. Mom’s nonfiction and high-brow literature books, her picture-perfect home, and her ladies’ bridge games.
I suppose I’m a bit of both. Not the picture-perfect part. Or the bridge games. Or the high-brow part either. Really, I’m more my father’s daughter, though I did read a lot of nonfiction in law school. Mostly law texts. I even practiced law for a while. Before finally quitting the prestigious law firm at which I worked a hundred plus hours a week to write crime thrillers, which Dad insisted on buying as soon as they published, and Mom never looked at.
I step out of the shower and towel off before drying my hair and beginning to dress. If Dad had gone first, Mom would have insisted on giving Dad a “proper” funeral. In the reverse situation, Dad would have done the same for her, honoring her wishes over his own preference. As it was, as their only child, it was up to me to decide for both.
Technically, Mom did die before Dad, lingering a few days after a stroke. Dad followed less than an hour later, succumbing to a heart attack. Leaving me an orphan at forty-two. My cousin Marissa is like a sister to me, though. She’s been with me through the entire ordeal. We used to joke about what I would do in the unlikely event they both went together in a plane crash or car accident. And now, here we are.
Being a head-in-the-clouds writer, part of me was inclined to say screw it and have the funeral my father would have wanted. But that feels disrespectful to my mother. So, I’m compromising. The funeral will be a hybrid of each of their personalities. It doesn’t really fit together, its individual components bickering with one other, vying for prominence. But, like my parents’ marriage, somehow, it works.
I step out of the bathroom, close my eyes, and draw a shaky breath. Marissa, coming down the hallway from the guest bedroom, gives me a watery smile, her eyes red from crying. We’ve done a lot of that the past few days. She throws an arm around my shoulder, and says, “Nice suit. The elf-ears really make the outfit.”
I give her an equally watery smile. “Only one of them is Elven. The other is Vulcan. Love the wizard robes!” Marissa’s nod to conservative dress is a pair of diamond earrings and black pumps.
Together, we proceed down the stairs and out the front door to the driveway. I’ve left it up to the rest of the family and the friends to dress according to their own dictates. Mom’s musical and floral choices will dominate the funeral, but the reception after is going to be all Dad’s. Trust me when I say the party he wanted will be out of this world.
I’ve often said that many of my ideas come to me in the shower. The first part of this literally did. My mind had been caught up in a stressful thought pattern. I caught myself and said, “Just be here, in the moment.” So I started to focus on the feel of the water, and then my mind took off again, this time painting a picture of the water running along the body and down the drain…and straight into a story.
I liked the idea of two people having opposite reactions to the wandering thoughts of the person in the shower. And who better than a pair of married opposites. But why would my protagonist be thinking about those opposites? Maybe, because she was saying goodbye to both. The idea of a quirky funeral to honor both of their wishes sounded good to me too. What do you think?
Thanks, Connie! I loved having them honor and respect two very different people.
Last wishes are so important but compromise can be so important. Wayne wanted nothing, no service or gathering, but to my mind the good-bye is for the living. It is a chance to start on the road to healing. So… I had a service and invited only family. I think you did a great job of finding that balance. Compromise. Yes.