The logistics of bereavement

Anywhere you look, you can find out about the stages of bereavement - disbelief, shock, anger and so forth, on to acceptance, but little is said about what you actually have to do when someone dies. Arrangements need to be made immediately regarding the dispositioning of the body. I suspect most people just throw lots of money at a funeral home and call their burial society, priest or minister and let someone else take care of all of those details. We didn't quite do it that way. The financial matters aren't too difficult in a community property state when there is a surviving spouse, but there are numerous financial institutions to notify, Social Security, pension plan, and I can't even remember what else (except I'd better, because I need to take care of it).

I spent more time and effort on my mother's funeral arrangements than I did on my own wedding. To help me deal with my own grief at knowing I was going to lose her comparatively soon, I started putting together a memory album that could serve as a memorial album over a year ago. [I'm pretty sure each family got one, but if you didn't and want one, let me know.] I researched funeral customs and tried to find out how the family, particularly Daddy, felt about memorial observances. Daddy wanted a do-it-ourselves affair but otherwise professed not to care; knowing the kind of service he had done for his own father, I decided I needed to base ours on Jewish customs.

Charlotte, Elizabeth and Brianna helped me send out printed notices (on plain wedding announcement cards) to my parents' entire Christmas card list, etc., and Elizabeth helped put together the Memorial Books, which also included a copy of the obituary, the graveside service and a home Yizkor service for Yom Kippur.

Mother had requested that her UCLA stroke doctor be allowed to perform an autopsy to advance scientific knowledge about the unusual kind of stroke she had suffered, after which she wished to be cremated. The idea of the plastic urn that came with the standard, basic package did not thrill me, nor did I really want to spend a lot of money on a wooden urn when we were going to be burying it (the family didn't want the ashes to be scattered), so I looked for and found a suitable box, one embossed with subtle flowers and lined with dark red velveteen. I brought this to the funeral parlor, and they were happy to use it. For the trip back to Clayton, I wrapped it in bubblewrap and hoped nobody would try to steal the purty box.

We actually left the urn in the car from the time I loaded it on Sunday the 12th until we took it out at the cemetery on the 19th. So Mother not only made the trip from Los Angeles to Clayton (by way of Lancaster), she also went to Lawton, Oklahoma and Amarillo, Texas. When we were in Amarillo, Evan and I stopped by the house she grew up in and took pictures, although we thought it would be going too far to take the urn out and get a photo of it in the front yard. Besides, it was still wrapped in bubblewrap. We also went to Palo Duro Canyon on this trip to collect some of its distinctive red dirt (from a parking area, so it wasn't sacred, or anything) to sprinkle into the grave. Palo Duro Canyon was one of my mother's favorite places to go, first with her grandparents and grandparents, and then when she and Daddy were dating, so it seemed fitting to take her there. This was a fairly emotional experience for me, since it brought back memories of Grandma as well as of Mother.

In Clayton, I made arrangements with Hass Funeral Directors to dig the grave, and on Friday evening when I went out to see how things were going, I discovered that Uncle Mac's urn had finally been set on a concrete base between Great-Grandmother Alice Isaacs and Granddaddy. The earth around the concrete looked raw, and the concrete itself seemed almost industrial, so I went and got a garland of silk ivy, some garden staples and a bag of polished rocks from the variety store. Evan, Charlotte (I think) and I arranged the garland around the edges of the concrete and then each of us placed a polished stone next to the urn. It is a recent Jewish tradition to place a stone on a grave when you visit - and it seemed appropriate for Mac's. His urn is a beautiful engraved brass cube, and it will look much prettier in a setting of polished river rocks than on plain concrete.

For Sunday, I knew we'd need hankies for everybody, which I had provided for long since; black ribbons for immediate family members, which I cut from black cloth after I discovered that tearable black ribbon is virtually impossible to find in the summertime; black safety pins to pin the ribbons on, a cup for the handwashing and a bowl for the water for the handwashing, all which I found at the WalMart in Dumas; a table to set everything on until we needed it, which I found in Daddy's poolhall office (my great-granddadd's magazine table, which seemed appropriate, since we were burying Mother at the foot of his grave); and a bunch of other details I don't recall at the moment.

Bess took care of a lot of the arrangements in Clayton - she placed the obituary in the Union County paper and in the Amarillo Globe Times, set up things with the Herzstein Museum for the service there, found Terrel Jones, the perfect pastor, for us, held a reception at her house after the memorial service and in general made things very easy at that end.

On Monday morning, Evan and I went out with a floral garland and a dried-flower wreath with a bronze-color Lone Star at the center and neatened up Mother's grave. There is a cluster of iris over her urn, and those should remain once the stone is placed. (One iris got pulled out of the bunch when we were filling the grave, so I saved the rhisome and plan to plant it in my garden this Saturday, which would have been Mother's 76th birthday.) The wreath will probably last just as long as it needs to, since we have already ordered the stone, and who knows what will happen with the garland or the bunch of lilies Brianna had already placed on the grave. We stapled them down, so they shouldn't blow away, at any rate. By the time the family came out for photos, the grave looked nice. I'm glad it's not in one of our California cemeteries where all you get is a flat plate they can run a riding mower over.

I know this post is something of a disorganized mess, but I'm mostly writing it down to help me remember. If anybody recalls something I've forgotten, or wants to add something, please do so. I think Jerm has some photos, and I would like to see those.