Boudicca's Voice

Laughing at the Face of Death... from a Distance

Some of my closest women friends are over the age of 80. That's not a big deal, except that it does mean that we truly are at the sunset of our friendships. The probability of my being the one that goes first is pretty remote. The probability of their waking up dead in the next five years is pretty high, in particular as one of them is 85 and slowing down.

My one friend, probably one of my closest friends just turned 81. It's just a number in my opinion and she knows I feel this way. Often she's been heard to say, "You know Bou, my kids are all older than you..." to which I often reply with a crinkled up face, "Yeah, I know. I just forget we aren't the same age..."

She always signs her emails to me, "Your twin..." It is a joke that we are sisters, but a generation and a half apart. We are very similar in personality and in sense of humor. Politically, she is far more Conservative, but I'd never tell her that. (I realized yesterday she is a huge Rick Santorum fan. My husband knows if Rick Santorum takes the Republican nomination, I'm staying home on election day. I'm an Independent.)

I got an email from her last evening that she and her husband picked out their caskets last month. Her husband has Parkinson's and they know... one of them will go in the next five years. As slowly progressing as his is, to have it at 85 is not a good thing. He has many other physical ailments that just come from 85 years of living, let alone with Parkinson's on top. So they're planning, thinking, trying to make sure that their kids aren't left in an 'Oh Sh!t!' situation.

As many times as I've posted on here about my planning my funeral, as bat crap crazy as it makes my oldest son, it is far different to say, "Hey, I want the Super Vault 2000 Casket, complete with gold handles and purple silk lining and a motion detector that sets off "Be Not Afraid" upon it's being lowered into the ground or pushed into a vault" than it is to pick out our spouse's casket when you know you're looking at just a few years when it'll actually... you know... be utilized.

And of course my friend and her husband didn't handle it stoically as I would not have. We're twins. We have a friend that works at the funeral home we're all going to use and when our funeral home girlfriend said to them, "I can take you up into the show room to show you the caskets or you can look at them in a book..." which I thought was a very good way of handling it as it's not exactly like picking out your a couch, my girlfriend replied, "Oh, we'll see them in the showroom, if he can try out the mattresses..."

I laughed hysterically.

Have you read Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy?

There is a scene where Tom goes with his grandma so she can go look at caskets. Grandma goes to the funeral home, complete with camera so they can take a picture of her in each of the caskets so she can decide which one she likes best with her body in it.

That whole scene is what made it one of my favorite books and Pat Conroy one of my favorite authors. Of course, how could Pat top that scene? You can't. I think every author has one scene in him that is the best ever and he can be a fantastic author, but there will be forever that one scene he'll never be able to top. (For John Irving it is in a Prayer for Owen Meany with Owen playing the baby in the Christmas Pageant. Although Mr. Irving is one of my favorite authors, some of his later stuff is troubling as he seems to be working through 'some issues' from his childhood that I find disturbing.)

And I think part of what made me laugh so hard about the grandma and the casket scene, moreso now, is I realize, the older I get, the quirkier I am becoming. I can so see myself taking off my shoes, gingerly getting into the casket handing my kids a camera saying, "I want to see which one I look best in..."

I find the whole thing rather fitting that I'm the State Historian for a National women's organization and under my umbrella comes... burial markers.

Death in inevitable, more so than taxes. Most of us can cheat on our taxes, but you can't really cheat death. It's going to come. Am I embracing it? No. I'm 46 and I'm hoping for another high quality 40 years, but neither am I not willing to talk about it because... it's not as if we can say, 'NO! Dammit! It's NOT going to happen to me and if I just IGNORE IT... it will be so!" Duddn't work that way...

So when I got this job, for some reason it kind of made me laugh when I realized all questions about markers, how to place them, what to do... come to me, the younger woman in the group who is up front and in your face, "This is how it is..."

I started out by putting out a global memo to all members explaining how to mark one's grave, explaining that a template could be ordered from our national organization and then the mason could carve it in, however they do it. There was another option of a bronze marker that can be glued onto the stone, but as we've found with my grandmother's grave, the glue doesn't stick well and we're finding that people are popping them off and stealing them for recycling.

How sick is that?

So I found out there was this engraving option and thought I'd put it out there for everyone.

Flash forward a couple weeks and I got a call from an elderly woman who was told to call me with her problem. It seems that she ordered the template, had it shipped to Ohio and her mason said it was too big.

I've seen it... the dang thing is as big as a dinner plate. She was calling me to talk to National about making them smaller.

So I made the call, got someone at HQ who said to me, "Mrs. L, that's all done by computer now. The mason should be able to scan it in and make it the size they want, which is typically 3 1/2 inches."

And... I could not resist.

I said, "Phew. Cuz, really, I was thinking, 'What do you do if you're sharing a headstone with a spouse?' I wondered if I was supposed to have my name and dates, and next to me this HUGE emblem from our organization and then in 6 point font underneath it... it would read, "and also buried here...""

She and I laughed long and hard and I thought, "Yeah, I'm the right person for this job..."

Posted by Boudicca at January 8, 2012 12:31 PM