fromthemouthofmoi

Years before my dad died I asked him what kind of funeral did he wish to have. He said he wanted to be buried in a pine box. When he died, we got a pine box and had it delivered to the funeral home. It was the kind you had to assemble yourself, and we, all of his children, assembled it together. I noticed that the funeral director looked horrified and upset. He looked so distraught that I pulled him aside and asked him if this was normal in his eyes. He emphatically said: No.  I asked him what other people did -- this being my first funeral where details were on me, -- and asked him to show me what was normally done. He took me to a room filled with caskets that startled me. I felt like I was suddenly in a car showroom being told to step inside the Bentley I hadn't come to buy. None of the caskets were designed for the person expected to go into them. There was no casket for the life spent singing or dancing, painting or reading. Not one casket seemed suitable for those that h

The last time I saw Jimmy he was a non-functioning human being. I stood in the doorway to his room after knocking, and opened the door a crack to relay some piece of insignificant information to him. In the 20 seconds the door remained cracked open I could see him in a fetal position on his bed, fully clothed on sheets that looked so dirty that I wondered how white sheets could be so black. I also saw that he had three TV trays lined up, with clean white towels spread across them, and an array of peyote buttons lined up on top, drying according to size. That was back in the 80's. Jimmy was gorgeous. You never saw a more handsome man. He had pale white skin, jet black shoulder-length hair, and the bluest eyes you ever saw. If he had a bit of facial stubble one might even say he sort of resembled Colin Farrell. He walked with a shuffle however claiming he had arthritis in his knees which I don't doubt he did. His teeth were yellow, -the colour of mustard- but they were as strai