My mother was a character, a cross between Carol
Channing and Phyllis Diller, who in her day, looked like Marilyn Monroe. She
drew the spotlight wherever she went. After a full and, in many ways
untraditional life, she passed away peacefully July 26th at the age
of 91. She’d been under excellent care at The Los Angeles Jewish Home for the
Aging and while Parkinson’s took it’s toll on her, she hung in there, and we would
continue to see glimpses of the oversized personality that we loved right ‘til
the end.
Most of the arrangements had been made at the
mortuary; all but one. Her epitaph.
My sister, April, and I remembered what she’d
wanted, but I needed to make sure, hunting down an essay I’d written in 2010
when she’d mentioned it on a visit to Dougie’s niche on the fifth anniversary
of his passing. I jotted the epitaph down on a slip of paper then reread an essay
I’d written in 2005 the day after Mom and Dougie had purchased their cremation
niche.
“The Gated Community”
Mom had called
me early the morning after she and Dougie had purchased their cremation
niches.
“I’ve finally
made it into showbiz!” she’d said.
In my morning
haze, I couldn’t figure out what on earth show business had to
do with cremation niches.
“Fannie Brice is buried close to ours. She has
all her group reserved there, and we’ll be in the same area as Carol Burnett’s
family. But, guess who’s right across
the lawn from us?”
“Who,
Mom?” Now, I was fully awake.
“Marilyn
Monroe! You know, people used to say
that we look alike. Do you realize that
she’d be the same age as me if she’d lived?”
I
pushed back the pillows and sat up in the bed.
“It’s hard for me to talk about this with you, Mom. It scares me.”
“Relax,
I’ll take you there next week,” she’d offered.
“Then, you can see it for yourself.
“What a way to start the morning,” I said to
my mother, as we drove past the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood Boulevard,
supposedly, the busiest intersection in the world. “What street do I turn on?”
“Let
me see…Glendon! That’s it!” She pointed her index finger at the next street
sign on the right. Her acrylic nail
looked ridiculously long and was painted metallic gold.
I
made a right and reduced my speed to a crawl.
“Turn
in here!” Mom said suddenly.
“This
leads to the cemetery?” I asked. “The sign says ‘Theatre Parking.’”
“That’s
if you go left. See, there’s an arrow on
the right.” She pointed the gold talon again. A little diamond ornament on the
end of her nail caught the sunlight. “Plain
as day,” she said. “Westwood Village Memorial Park.”
“This
place isn’t easy to find.” I steered my Volvo wagon into the narrow driveway
behind a bank. “I can’t believe your cemetery shares an alley with a multi-plex
theatre in the middle of Westwood Village.”
“Been
here for years,” Mom said. “Westwood’s a great location. I’ll be so happy here in the middle of all
these tall buildings. And, it’s just a
stone’s throw from Beverly Hills.”
The
grounds were peaceful and manicured. A
variety of shade trees created a natural setting among the tombstones that were
embedded in the lawn. Impatiens, azaleas, and begonias in cheery pink colors
were in full bloom.
In
the distance, at the far end of the cemetery, a small crowd of people gathered
in a circle. Everyone was dressed in
black, except for one tall man in tan slacks and a dark blue shirt. I looked away, to give them their privacy.
My
mother, who was Dougie’s fourth wife, is a youthful seventy-seven. And, my stepfather, Dougie, Mom’s third
husband, is eighty-six. They were a pair. He’d just recovered from heart
surgery and hired a “low key” personal trainer at the gym. I was glad that Mom was so enthusiastic about
their “final resting place,” but the whole idea of their dying made me uneasy.
I
parked the car by a path just outside the small chapel adjacent to the offices
of the mortuary. While Mom walked
slowly, enjoying the beauty of the grounds, I stepped up my pace and looked
straight ahead past the open door of the chapel for fear of seeing something
morbid, like a coffin.
Once
we entered the office, a bland-looking gentleman, somewhere in his thirties,
standing behind a high desk on the phone, motioned for us to take a seat in the
foyer. “I’ll be right with you,” he mouthed.
“Let’s
just stand,” I said to Mom, not missing the boxes of Kleenex discreetly placed
on every tabletop.
“Mrs.
MacDougall?” the man asked my mother after he hung up the phone. His hair
matched the color of his beige dress shirt; his skin, a shade lighter. He directed us to another room and he told us
to wait for Enid, the sales rep, who’d helped Mom and Dougie secure their final
resting place. “She’ll only be a minute,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”
Home? I thought, as we made our way past
a large television that was playing a documentary tribute on the life of Ronald
Reagan to an empty room.
My
mother plopped down at the table and instantly took out a small spiral
notebook, she refers to as her “Tablet,” and crossed off “Cemetery-Heather.”
I
continued to stand, way too uptight to sit.
“Mom, those casket molding things,” I nodded in the direction of the far
wall displaying various casts of partial caskets. “It’s like shopping for
carpet, you know, with samples and all?
Weird.”
“Don’t
be silly,” she laughed, “People are dying to get in here.”
I
walked over to the urns on display at the opposite corner of the room. Little white tiles with prices were placed at
the base of each urn.
“Look,”
Mom said, pointing to a cylindrical copper urn on the end of the bottom
shelf. “That’s ours!”
“This
one?” I tapped it as if it were sizzling hot.
“The price says $450. Mom, it’s the cheapest one.” I suggested that maybe she should have gone
with the cloisonné one, or maybe the porcelain one with the roses.
“Did Dougie talk you into the plain one?” I
asked. She’d mentioned earlier how Dougie
had unsuccssefully tried to bargain with Enid to get a discount on their plots. He’d already purchased two for himself and
his third wife, Marion. “Look,” he’d told Enid, “I don’t want to be next to her
anymore. That leaves an empty spot that
you can sell again.”
“No,
I wanted the plain urn. But, wait ‘till you see our actual niche,” she said,
enthusiastically. “Dougie went all out for that one.”
Enid
appeared at the doorway, smiling wide.
“Good Morning, Mrs. MacDougall.
And, this must be your daughter.” Her fixed smile fixed dripped down
just a hair. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
I could tell that she adored my lively
mother. Mom greeted her with a wave of
her pen, causing the red and white sequins spelling out “chic” on her blue
t-shirt to shimmer under the bright ceiling light.
“I’m
still looking,” she said to Enid, referring to her efforts to find a man for
her. Mom was always setting people up and offering relationship advice. “I just don’t know any single guys anymore,
and with your kind of work, the timing’s all wrong for you to meet somebody.”
Enid
was dressed in an appropriate somber blue skirt and blazer with a lacey white
camisole peeking out from the top of her jacket. She was prim and professional,
but the camisole signaled that she had a little flair. Leave it to Mom to find
out that Enid was single and would love to find a mate.
“How
do you deal with all the families and their grief?” I asked Enid.
“With
compassion,” she answered in a soothing voice.
“There’s no real training for compassion. You just have to have it in you.”
“You’ll just love where we are,” Mom
interrupted, too thrilled with their purchase to think of much else. “It’s very exclusive,” she added, fiddling
with her frosted bobbed hairdo. “We’re in the Garden Gated Estates!”
“Then,
shall we?” Enid swept her hand toward the door.
As
we headed down the path to Mom’s “gated community,” I was constantly aware of
the internment at the other end of the park.
Enid
led us to a granite column about seven feet high. “This is where your parents will be,” she
told me.
I
fingered the blank gold leaf plaque at the top of the monument.
“See,
we have top billing!” Mom said.
I
looked around at the bright yellow and orange marigolds and the elegant row of topiary
rose bushes nearby.
“Not
bad, eh?”
“Everything’s
done,” Enid said, “Except your parent’s have to pick an epitaph.”
“She’s
doing it,” Mom said, pointing to me.
“I am?”
“You’ll know the
right thing to say.”
“How about ‘Together
Forever,’” I offered, remembering one of the epitaphs on display in the
offices.
“No,” Mom said. “You
never know what happens in the afterlife and I don’t want to be tied
down.”
Mom chatted with
Enid, but I fazed out of the conversation.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of the far end of the lawn. Two gardeners
had arrived on the scene, and there were some gaps in the tightly knit group
now. I hadn’t seen the casket
before. The gardeners, in their Village
Memorial Park uniforms, gently lowered the casket into the ground. Couples and threesomes embraced.
On the way out, I drove
slowly around the perimeter of the park and Mom proudly pointed out Marilyn
Monroe’s grave with the ever-present fresh flower.
“I can’t deal with
all of this. I don’t want to think about your dying, Mom.”
“Look,
sweetheart,” she said. “When I wake up
each morning, if there are no candles burning, and if I don’t see any flowers
or hear music, I get up.”
“But, how can you
be so at ease with this?”
“Listen, darling, I
love life. You know I do,” she explained. “But, frankly, Heather, this is reality.”
As soon as we
turned out of the gate, Mom pulled the visor down and started to paint her lips
with her favorite, Revlon’s “Crystal Cut Coral.” She swept the tube round and round her lips. Smacking them, she flipped the visor back up.
“So, how about
going to The Cheesecake Factory?” she asked, tossing the lipstick back in her
oversized white purse. “I love the bread
there.”
_________________________________
I looked down at
the slip of paper and called the mortuary.
While on hold for
Enid’s replacement, Kathleen, I thought about what Mom’s nurse, Roxy, had said
to me about the day before Mom passed away. “I’ve got to go,” Mom’d told her. She’d had her hair done and
her glittery clutch bag was at her side.
“My husband is calling for me.”
“Which one?” Roxy’d
asked.
“The last one.”
Feeling the grief
over her passing – expected, but never fully prepared for –I smiled to
myself. Someone said to me that Heaven
would never be the same. I can hear her now. “Hats and horns!”
“This is
Kathleen.”
“Hi Kathleen, it’s
Heather Haldeman. Ok, it’s what we thought.”
“Go ahead, I’m
ready.”
“Ciao Bello.”
“Ciao Bello,” she
said. “Got it.”
