March 29, 2006 – Signing a Life Away

March 29, 2006 – Signing a Life Away

It’s just past noon on Tuesday January 31th, 2006. I’m upstairs sitting on a sofa in the foyer at the top of the stair writing away on my Dell Latitude laptop PC. I’ve made some progress on my mother’s obituary. Her rosary service is in two days and the funeral is this Friday. We want the first notice to run in the “El Paso Times” on Wednesday—copy due date is today before close of business. The larger one we want to run on Thursday morning before the rosary service in the afternoon. How do you condense a lifetime into a 50-word obituary or for that matter into 500-word one? In the case of the latter, you find what you think are the defining moments in a person’s life and tie them together. In the case of the former you state the simple fact and alert those who knew her where they can come to bid her farewell.

“Trinidad Q. McLeod died peacefully in her sleep on January 29, 2006 at William Beaumont Hospital. Rosary services will be held Thursday February 2, at Martin Funeral Home, 3839 Montana Avenue. Funeral services will be held Friday February 3, at Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Church at 4800 Byron Street.”

Today was also the due date for the copy that would run on the DVD to introduce the 20 photographs—also due today—that would be made into a self running slide show set to music. We also needed the concluding text to follow the photos. On our return trip this morning from Burlington Coat Factory where we had been shopping for appropriate clothes to wear to the rosary and funeral services, we had all decided to conclude the slide show with a phrase in Tagalog—the national language of the Philippines—that said “we love you.” My niece CB had been trying to call PG, a close friend of Mom, who was also the leader of the local Filipino community to have her alert the community of Mom’s passing. She tried again to reach her to ask for the Tagalog phrase but again to no avail. She decided to call NT, the widow of Mom’s brother George. NT had come to the U.S. following her two daughters, both of whom had arrived in the early 1990s to work as nurses. NT is eccentric, free spirited and inclined to be flighty but she has a good heart. NT provided the phrase in Tagalog, carefully spelling each word of the three-word phrase. We now had all our materials to provide the funeral home during our meeting this afternoon.

At about 2:00 PM, all six of us loaded into Dad’s white Chevy Uplander for the drive to the funeral home. When we arrived our representative, RM led us into the conference room where we had last met and we all sat down to go over the “Statement of Funeral Goods and Services Selected/Purchase Agreement.” Sitting at the conference room table I was suddenly struck by how much this resembled the purchase of an automobile or other such big ticket item. The statement RM presented was a four-page legal size document, with two pages of itemized services and associated dollar amounts requiring a signature at the bottom of page two. The remaining two pages of the document were “Terms and Conditions’ with legal expressions in uppercase bold type. Two paragraphs jumped off the page because both were all written in bold uppercase letters. The first began “WARRANTIES WE DISCLAIM:” and the second began “ARBITRATION”: the word not only in bold type but underlined. There were two more paragraphs of uppercase bold type of the fourth page as well.

Having never been involved in the business side of a funeral before, I found all this intriguing. What does a funeral home get paid to do? And there on the statement was an itemized list of everything they provided. In Section I, “Services and Merchandise Funeral Director and Staff Services” was a charge for $1750.00 for Basic Professional Service Fee. I immediately thought it was the part dealing with preparing the body for burial. But, no, that came under “Care and Preparation of Remains” which was billed out at $650.00, plus an additional charge of $300.00 that went for “Dressing and Casketing of Deceased.” The casket came under the heading “Merchandise” and consisted of the “Star Copper” casket Mom had selected. It was made by Batesville Casket Company of Batesville, Indiana, a subsidiary of Hillenbrand Industries and the leading manufacturer of metal and hardwood burial caskets according to their website. The Star Copper was made of 20-gauge steel painted in a coppertone exterior with a beige crepe interior. It cost $1495.00 and would have cost more at today’s prices had Mom not purchased it when she did several years ago.

The other items on the statement were the type of charges you’d expect with any event, wedding, baptism, family get together, etc. The first was “Use of Facilities and Related Services”—the funeral home’s chapel. Itemized costs were broken into two parts: a $300 charge for “Visitation”—guests coming to pay their respects during the rosary on Thursday—and a $500 charge for a “Funeral Ceremony” which was the charge for the rosary service itself including an additional $150 for a priest to lead the rosary service. The funeral home provided the room from 3:00 to 4:00 PM for private visitation—family members and relatives. The rosary service ran from 6:00 to 7:00 PM, with the public visitation for friends of Mom to visit running from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM. We would also use the room on Friday morning as family and close friends gathered before the funeral. The last major item on the statement “Transportation” consisted of four charges. The first was a $320 charge for “Transferring Remains to Funeral Home,” Mom’s trip from William Beaumont to Martin. The second was a $315 charge for “Funeral Vehicle/Hearse,” Mom’s ride from Martin to Lady of Assumption and from there to Ft. Bliss National Cemetery. The third was a $330 charge for “Family Vehicle/Limousine 2@ $165 each. And the fourth was a charge of “Flower Vehicle 1@ $115.” There was a separate $350 charge for “flowers” and police escort charge of $270. And there was an estimated charge of $300 for the larger obituary that we were producing to run in the “El Paso Times.”

For most of the explanation of charges we all kept a business like demeanor but after all of the details had been explained and agreed to, the actual signature my father signed to the document made him break down once again. It carried each of us to our own state of grief, some more demonstrative than others. The signature made the arrangement final. Until then Mom was still somewhere between life and her final resting place, suspended in time until some machine was set in motion to move her along her way. That signature had started the machine rolling.

Our representative RM offered some consoling words with the tissues that he handed out and excused himself while he made copies for our files. We were left alone with our collective grief and some sense of guilt at having moved Mom further on her journey away from us. The reality was that we were holding onto the mortal shell of what our mother was. Her spirit had long ago soared into the world beyond ours’, perhaps stopping to look in on all those she was leaving behind, some like my grand daughter AT actually aware of her visit. She surely visited the rest of us to take one last look before departing but none of us could see beyond our grief to enjoy that fleeting moment.

We gathered our copy of the “Statement…” and made one other choice RM requested us to make, which among the prayer cards we wished to select. These would be provided to each of the mourners attending Mom’s rosary. EV asked her daughter CB what she thought Mom would like and CB immediately chose one adorned with a winged angel, halo around her red shoulder length hair standing framed before a roman arch. At her bare feet, two white doves are taking wing at the right of the picture, while another sits quietly in front and to the right of the angel. She’s wearing a long sleeved, ankle length white flowing sheath dress, the cloth bunched at the circular opening around her neck, a white cloth belt tied in a large bow gathers the gown below her breast. Draped over her palms-up, outstretched arms is a pinkish red silk-like shawl. The angel’s face bears a look of contemplation, her eyes staring toward the doves in flight. Mom loved angels and she would have been pleased with CB’s choice. The back side of the card bore the 23rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd…” and RM said Martin would add the phrase “In Loving Memory of Trinidad Q. McLeod with the dates of her life below. Inset beside the words would be a picture of our choice.

He then asked if we had brought the pictures for the DVD. We had, EV replied and proffered them to him. Was there one in this set that we might want to use for the card? My sisters all agreed on a recent photo of Mom. She’s wearing a blue dress. Her short hair has been coiffed and her face is turned slightly to the right though her eyes are looking straight at the camera and she has the slightest hint of a smile. It is an ageless look that adorns her face. You can see the spirit of a young woman peering across the ages. It is a proud expression of a self-contented woman. She is holding on her lap a pure white cat, whose name I’ve forgotten, that had the most unusual green eyes. The cat has turned its face and is also looking at the camera. Mom loved cats and they adored her, dogs, birds, and fish too. If Mom were here, this would have been the photo she'd choose. Perhaps she was. Our choice made, emotionally drained we leave the funeral home and return home. Another day closer to the last goodbye.