Eternal Life

by Elizabeth Aharonian Moon

She stood in front of her opened closet. She had to choose wisely, she knew that. Certainly not black. Certainly not anything aqua or orange, her favorite colors. That didn't leave much to pick from. She needed to look as if she was grieving or mourning, so the red-poppy print wouldn't do at all. Nor would her suit; it would look as if she was there on business.

This was all his doing anyway. Even before he started his slow decline, he had told her emphatically, not once, but ten times or more, he wanted no funeral, no wake, no obituary, no fan-fare. People, he said, wouldn't know he was dead and so he'd have some form of eternal life. “Just gather up the family at the end,” he said, “and they can all say their goodbyes, or whatevers. They'll certainly all be on good behavior and that will be that.”

No matter how she insisted on some sort of death ritual—a small service in the chapel near the beach, a wake right in their living room, a brief article in the town's weekly newspaper, one or two sentences in the Sunday church bulletin—he insisted even more strongly, “No! No, I don't want any of that—all a waste of everyone's time, a waste of money.”

How vividly she remembered those conversations which sometimes grew into arguments as she pondered her newest dilemma: what to wear to this non-event. It was only after the vehement insistence by all their adult children ( each from former marriages) that she agreed to arrange a gathering at a nearby restaurant—actually a bar and grill. The place had no parking, but it did have a very nondescript function room behind the bar, small enough to accommodate all of them and a handful of guests. The youngest of the adult children printed invitations on her computer, looking more like the flyers she had once hung around the neighborhood when her cat got lost, announcing the date and time, the place, and the reason for the event ( the word -Memorial- was in small letters)

Deciding what to wear was difficult, but thinking about the non-event was nerve-racking (where were those adult children with their grand ideas now?) Flowers? Hors d'oeuvres? Servers? Beer and wine? Open bar? Sandwiches? Speeches? He'd not want speeches or eulogies or any of it. She worried for days. At last, obsessed with funeral rites and rituals, she recalled a course she had taken years ago at the community college: Etruscan and Roman Funereal Art. Stone sarcophagi were elaborately carved with vines, grapes and reveling gods surrounding a likeness of the deceased; into the coffin were heaped many of the deceased's possessions including rings, hair ornaments, mummified pets, spoons, all reminders of the deceased's life as he began his trip to the next one. If an urn held the cremated remains of the deceased, its lid was carved as a human head in his likeness. Hmmm, she said aloud. That's an idea.

On the morning of the non-event, she set up a card table in the function room. On it, she placed a Mason jar containing some of his ashes topped by his most recent passport picture, and other objects which represented his life: a deck of cards, his slide-rule, a bowl of mint hard candies, his plaid vest, his well-used Joy of Cooking, and more. Much more. It was a little flea market though nothing was for sale. Guests,with a drink in hand, could lean over the table, touch his chess board, read his favorite Yeats poem, see his driver's license, re-membering him, whispering him alive for the briefest moment. He could not have objected to that.

But he might have objected to her outfit, a slim-fitting, knee-length dress patterned with white daisies on curvey green stems. It clung to her; it announced Spring.