The Viewing Part 1

I hate open caskets.  The body never looks like it did in life.  It looks waxy or doll-like.  Except with obvious make up.  I tried to talk my parents out of a viewing – at least one with the body present.

But my mom had to see him one more time.  She said she didn’t want the image of the back of his head – the way she found him – in her mind for the rest of her life.  So she wanted the image of his corpse facing up instead?

The body was displayed all day, but the family has to see it first.  No one else is allowed to come by until the family has.  So we went early.

Melanie went up to the casket first.  I wasn’t going to, initially.  I didn’t want to see it.  But Melanie was up there alone because Matt had to watch the kids back at my parents’ house.  So I went to stand beside her.  I looked at his hands first.  Okay, not too bad.  But I couldn’t handle his face.  The lips were all wrong.  Something about his closed eyes and the way his eyelashes looked was wrong.  Did I mention that they had to put a hat on him because of the incision from the autopsy?  His hair was too short to cover it.

I turned around and went straight for the door.  I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew I had to get out.  Fuck being strong for my mom.  Fuck her for putting so much of this on us.  Fuck her for not listening to anyone else’s wishes.  Fuck her.

I was walking around the side of the funeral home when Brett caught up to me.  He hugged me and I just sobbed.

Once I had myself together, I went back inside, but I didn’t go back up to the casket.  I sat on a couch in the back of the room.

Then, my dad comes up to Melanie and I and tells us that we gave the wrong jersey to the funeral home.  He made both of us feel bad.  I was so mad.  If they wanted a specific jersey, they should have picked the clothes out themselves instead of leaving two people who didn’t live there and didn’t see their brother every fucking day to do it.

I decided to leave.  They jersey they wanted wasn’t anywhere in the house when we looked.  I even looked again.  Brett and I took off to try to find one at Fan Attic in the mall.  Except it had closed and been replaced with a fucking hat shop.

I found out later that my mom, dad and sister were up at the casket and my mom said, "You’re right.  That does look terrible."  Melanie just started crying and saying that we tried.  Later, my dad apologized to me and said that he wasn’t ‘blaming’ us.  Whatever.  We did what we could with what little information we had.

In the end, they sent a Cowboy’s jacket to the funeral home and that’s what they put on the body for the visitation.

I thought I could write the whole thing out in one sitting, but I can’t.  I’ll continue it another time.