Now What

Now What

It strikes me that “funeral home” is an oxymoron.

No one is home...well, at least one person is out to lunch.

They give me his final picture on a bookmark. A bookmark.

In what book would I leave you? Got it: All Quiet on the Western Front.

I think I’m pretty clever.

Don’t try to be clever, you fiend. You’re at a funeral, I say to me.

I cut my eyes to the open viewing-room door, not turning my head.

It probably isn’t as bad as I think.

He probably doesn’t look plastic-y or cold, in there, in his body-shaped box.

He probably just looks … gone. Flown this cuckoo's nest.

“He looks down on us with purring wings,” mourners say with prayer hands.

I stifle a grin with a bowed head and strategic Kleenex:

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!

Heathen! You’re going to hell.

I shrug at me. It’s okay. I didn’t know him.

Pictures repeat on a yellowed screen:

wedding baby picnic beach, wedding baby picnic beach, wedding ...

while bright-toothed Anne Murray sings “Spread your tiny wings and fly away…”

That’s what it’s come down to in this funeral home, which is not one.

So now what?

Do you amble home, punch in some things on your ergonomic keyboard?

Do you bake chicken cacciatore, again? Fold socks into balls?

Lock the Colossal Specter in your silver-heart trinket box?

It’s not a bad life.

Or do you zipline into the holy hand of hedonism

Dip slabs of bacon into caramel gelato

Blare “Welcome to the Jungle”

at noon on a Monday

in your naughty lingerie, curtains open,

shaking your madness maker, telling yourself you don’t care

if your pastor drives by?