Instead of actually writing something new, I'm just posting up my recent homework assignment. For my life development class I had to visit various places, one of which was a funeral home, and here's my one page response to the visit. I'm posting it because of certain red headed, excellent gift giving haters out there called me out on some comments my teacher made about the piece. The comments in question were "talented," "gifted," and "you should be a writer." My teacher might be out of her mind, but I dunno it'd made me feel pretty good.
Old Man’s Treasure
I spent about fifteen minutes inside the Hayworth Miller Funeral home. I had called the night before and set up a meeting with a gentleman, and when I arrived at the pre-determined time, they were seeing a customer. It was one of those out of the blue things, which is kind of how death works. They thought that if I waited a bit then they would get a chance to talk to me, and after I flipped through a Winston Salem Monthly magazine Wes came out and told me straight up that they weren’t going to be finished anytime soon, and that his best friend’s mom had just passed away, and it was going to take some time. Even though I didn’t get to see any dead bodies or watch them suck the guts out of anyone, which I probably would have enjoyed, I still had enough info on my impression of this place.
The first thing I noticed is the box of tissues they had laying around everywhere. On every surface was a box of tissues, which was the clue that this wasn’t your everyday office building, that and the church pews. Unfortunately, I’ve been to some viewings at Hayworth Miller before, and I say unfortunately not because it isn’t a nice place, because it is, but because it’s always a bit of a bummer when you go to the funeral home, hence the tissues. The waiting room is also the place where, during a viewing, the people can mingle or hob knob or whatever it’s called that people do at funeral home when they aren’t offering condolences and viewing the body.
The tissues in the waiting room, the interrupted appointment, and the burying of your best friend’s mom, all seem to sum up the life of a funeral director for me. Tissues equal sadness, what should have been a slow day becomes a busy day, meaning death strikes when it pleases, and finally, there comes a time when you have to bury someone that is close to you.
When I was in kindergarten my grandma died from Alzheimer’s disease, and ever since then I think I’ve been obsessed with my own death. In second grade I kept looking at an old science book that talked about the sun going super nova, burning everything, and then slowly winking out; leaving Earth a cold barren place. It’s easy to recall the red skies and boiling seas giving way to the eternal night and frozen land where nothing lives. Then in the 8th grade I was absolutely sure the Earth was going to end, even though the science book reassured me the sun wouldn’t burn out for billions of years. Still, the folks at church kept saying Jesus could come back at any time, cue my reading of the Book of Revelations to see what was going to go down. After that, I kind of mellowed out some, but I still have a fascination with dystopian futures and post apocalyptic literature and movies.
Even though the end of all things always freaked me out, death in my family wasn’t quite so bad. Not to say they weren’t sad occasions, but the events leading up to and after the funeral, usually involve a lot familial bonding along with good food and story telling. When my Grandpa died my cousin’s then wife became very upset at all the laughter going on in the house, because she was more used a dour mourning experience. However, we Cornatzer’s are great socializers and liars, so the events take on a more lighthearted atmosphere.
I was in the third grade when my grandpa died and my mom gave me the option of staying home or going to school, I wasn’t upset at the time about him being dead, but I didn’t know what to do, when my mom said my sister was staying home, I stayed as well, and I played a lot of video games over the course of a couple days. My grandpa meant a lot to me, when I rattled off crap about Spider-Man or ninjas he always listened and put up with me running through his house attacking imaginary super villains.
The weird thing about my grandpa is that he had his leg amputated, which isn’t so weird, until you learn he kept his leg in a freezer in the basement. Apparently there’s a passage in the Bible, or something he believed anyways, about having all your body parts when you get to heaven. Thus, in order to walk around in Heaven, he made sure he was buried with his amputated leg. There were countless afternoons I spent with my sister and my cousin daring them to go look at the leg.
After his funeral there was the rumor that money had been hidden in his house, so for the better part of a week most of my family looked over that house all over before the house was sold, and I remember sitting around day dreaming with my cousins and helping out on this grand treasure hunt. All that mingled up to death not being so bad, except for when I would lay in my bed at night and try to imagine would it would be like to cease to exist, or what it would be like to live forever, both of which scared me equally.
The funeral home just reminds me of people getting together to talk about sports or what’s going on in town, with the unpleasantness of having to hug people you haven’t seen in awhile, and then look at a body, that I keep thinking is going to wake up and grab me. Everyone says those bodies laying there look empty, but to me, they look like they’re about to spring into action, so I avoid the funeral home and funerals, but I love the family gatherings, maybe that’s why I like Christmas more than death. I’ll take a toy over a casket any day.
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