The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection #4) - Richard Paul Evans Page 0,16
been to. Three years earlier I had gone to a wake for my ex’s uncle. The service was held at a country club with an open bar. The noise level grew so loud with laughter and chatting that it was hard to talk without shouting. At one point a fight broke out. It seemed to me that the casket and its occupant were little more than a conversation piece at a frat party. I said something about it to Marc, but he just said, “You know Stan. He would have wanted it that way.”
The line to my father’s casket followed the perimeter of the room. Against the walls were tables set up with an array of photographs, books, and other knickknacks from my father’s life.
There were pictures of my father as a young man. It struck me how handsome he was, something a child rarely thinks about a parent. There were pictures from Vietnam, none of which I had ever seen. In one he was shirtless and holding a machine gun with ribbons of bullets crossing his chest. It was as ironic a portrayal of him as I could imagine.
There were myraid pictures of him and my mother—at least six from their wedding day. They looked like children. They practically were, as they married in their early twenties, almost ten years younger than I was.
There were pictures of our family, the three of us. Those were halcyon days. In one picture I was maybe four or five, walking between my parents, each of them holding a hand. There was a picture of me and my dad at my mom’s funeral. I don’t know who took the picture. I don’t know why they took the picture.
In addition to the photographs there were books. Many of my father’s favorites were on display, as if he were still trying to recommend them after his death. I walked over to the table to look through them. Most significant to me was Cervantes’s Don Quixote. It was the perfect book to represent my father. He was always tilting at windmills.
I assumed the displays had been put together by Wendy. I looked around for her. She wasn’t hard to find. She was standing next to the casket, her eyes red, talking to someone I didn’t know. Actually, besides her, I didn’t know anyone.
My father’s casket lay against the east wall. It was partially open, the lid raised from his chest up—half-couch, they call it. The lower half of the casket was draped with a beautiful crimson spray of flowers. Red roses, red gerbera daisies, and red carnations, stark against the casket’s varnished rosewood veneer.
The casket was nice, which made me think that it was probably chosen by Wendy, as my father would never have chosen, or allowed, such reckless vanity. I once heard him go off on a diatribe about people building monuments to themselves after attending the funeral of a local author.
He used to say to my mother, Just put me in a cardboard box and bury me in the backyard. I used to hate it when he said that, but I’m not sure he was joking. He did, however, stop saying it after my mother died. And, I remembered, she had a beautiful casket, if there is such a thing.
My mother’s was a unique funeral, different from most. I remembered that after the ceremony we all walked outside and released butterflies.
I’ve never liked the idea of a viewing. The idea of people filing past my dead body is disturbing to me—like strangers rummaging through my personal items at a garage sale. Considering that scientists have done studies to see if you spill less coffee walking forward or backward and why older men have big ears (I’m not making this up), I’m sure someone has done research to see if the practice of displaying the dead is psychologically valuable or damaging.
I can see that there might be a benefit to the tradition, as I’ve read that it provides finality to those left behind. I understand this. Because of the nature of the car accident, my mother’s casket was closed. A part of me desperately wanted to pry open the box and see if she really was inside.
Wendy turned her attention to me as I approached the casket. I looked down at my father’s lifeless body. The person inside the silk-lined box didn’t look like my father. My father was never still. He was less matter than energy.