No fuss (or the four boxes in a shopping bag)

It is not entirely clear to me where Pat got his idea for the no-fuss send off.

PJ and Camille tell me this is an Irish thing (see John Mulaney).

Yet, in his defense, Pat had no way of knowing how his final wishes were anything but uncomplicated. Pat wanted no priests, no speeches and fuss. His ashes were to be transported to Ireland, Liverpool for one final match, Colorado as a final fuck you to the mountain that had not killed him and one set of ashes would remain with me. It all seemed so simple. In the original version, Pat had left out his American family. Upon learning of the omission, I demanded :“What about me? Didn’t it ever occur to you that I would want to see you?” So, the fourth set of ashes was a last minute add on.

The truth was Pat viewed the living’s ministrations to the dead as unnecessary and burdensome. Pat did not want his children and me visiting graves, planting flowers and speaking to ghosts.

Pat was standing in our kitchen, right next the fridge, leaning over the counter when he told me about his no fuss final wishes. He looked weary, but he was determined, as he walked me through his exit strategy. I realized that all those times I saw Pat thinking silently about things, he was preparing himself to tell me what he wanted.

Now, I suppose I could have just agreed and promised him that I would respect his wishes.

But, the whole thing annoyed me and I felt compelled to explain why. “That’s a terrible idea,” I said. “Are you seriously telling me you want no priests and no speeches? I work for a Catholic university and my dad had three priests at his funeral.” And then there were his students and colleagues at Rutgers and beyond, Pat knew that professors live for speech-making. His tragic, premature death would inspire an outpouring of the sort of self-promoting eulogies only professors can muster. “How can you expect me to tell people not to make a fuss? When hundreds of people will want to do just that. “ I even pointed out that he would be dead anyway, and for once, “I could do what I liked.”

Pat scowled and said nothing.

“You know, funerals are for the living and not the dead, the people left behind will be struggling when you are gone,” I reminded him.

Again, Pat would not utter a word, he was not going to give me an inch on this.

I complained to a friend of mine, whose wife has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, thinking he would back me up on this “no fuss “ funeral crap. Even he refused to support me, “If that is what Pat wants, how could you not do this for him?” I sighed, he was right, but, ashes and Liverpool and Colorado were places that were from Pat’s life before me.

My feelings were hurt: the truth is I felt excluded from Pat’s plans for the beyond.

The other issue with cremation is that while it seems straightforward, and Pat could never have imagined how difficult his no fuss final wishes would be. He could not have anticipated how the the insane world we live in would conspire against us.

The day I contacted the funeral home about Pat’s cremation, it was a day or two before the hospice nurses believed Pat would die. When I asked the funeral home to divide Pat’s ashes into four containers, Clint, the funeral director, made me repeat what I was requesting. It was an unusual request, to say the least.

The other problem was that the funeral home was closed, we were making all these arrangements over the phone. In non-COVID-19 times, I would have gone to the funeral home, met with funeral director in-person, selected an urn, discussed how the ashes would be returned to us and planned a wonderfully, raucous evening in Pat’s honor with his friends and beer and music: no priests, no speeches, and no fuss.

Because of the pandemic, the funeral home had a skeletal staff (forgive the pun), working remotely. I was told I could pick up the ashes this Monday. But, since no one was in the office, I would need to call ahead to ensure someone was there to meet me. I had wanted to be there when they prepared his body for cremation, even this was not allowed.

I had hated the idea of sending Pat’s body to this strange place, and I did not like the thought of his ashes sitting in some dark room, forgotten. There was some notation on the funeral home contract that said ashes not picked up after 30 days would be disposed of under the guidelines established by state law. I did not want Pat to be discarded by accident.

So, I called Clint to pick up the remains last Monday. Several friends offered to go with me, but in COVID-19 times, that would mean standing back at a distance and following along in their own cars. I was getting used to grief in quarantine.

Then, one friend suggested I bring Camille with me, but that was too much to ask. I did not grow up in a family where cremation was done. That seemed to me something WASPs did. Greek and Irish funerals have the bodies on full display. I did not know how I would react to what the funeral home would give me. So, I decided the best bet was to keep PJ and Camille out of their father’s cremation: I just did not know what we were in for.

Clint told me he would be in the office from 1 to 3 pm, I would just need to call ahead so someone he could be there to meet me. Apparently, the COVID quarantine would deny me the dignity of being seated inside the goddamn funeral home to get Pat’s ashes. At least, I would not have to dress up and put on make-up. That was a relief, there was no way to transform myself into an elegantly dressed, dignified widow without the services of a hair stylist, skilled aesthetician, and dry cleaner.

Clint explained to me that he would meet me in the funeral home’s parking lot and he would bring Pat to me.

The first problem arose as soon as I arrived the funeral home. The West Laurel Hill Cemetery is a dead zone (sorry about another bad pun) and I had not written Clint’s personal cell phone number down. When I managed to get the phone working, I got the funeral home’s answering service and the operator explained she would need to find Clint’s phone number to call him. Suddenly, I was getting that sort of crazy rage grief would. This was infuriating, the funeral home had one job, cremate Pat’s ashes and return them to me. I started to rage to the the operator that I had just paid $3500 for my husband’s ashes and that the least you all could do was be there when I said I was coming to pick up my husband. The operator could tell I was getting agitated, and she clearly spent most of her days with crazy, grieving people, and she firmly reassured me that Clint would be there in a minute.

So I sat in the car, in the parking lot of the funeral home, waiting for Clint to bring me the ashes.

Then the cruel absurdity of it all started to dawn on me, and I would have started to weep but suddenly Clint appeared at my window. Clint was a cheerful, chubby man in his 30s or early 40s. It was hard to tell his precise age since he wore a mask and gloves. In his hands, he carried a promotional shopping bag, just like the kinds you get at conferences or high-end supermarkets. The bag was grey and read West Laurel Cemetery. Inside the bag Pat was divided into four boxes, just as I had requested. Though I thought I had an ordered an urn for Pat, Clint must have forgotten. There were only boxes. I did not feel like going back to the parking lot and arguing the point.

Pat’s ashes were heavier than I might have predicted.

The whole transaction reminded me of the curbside service that have become part of the pandemic, when we pick up our Chinese food or groceries.

Clint thanked me and wished me a good day, which seemed like a strange thing for a guy handing me the ashes of my husband to say. But, this is business, and when you run a funeral home, handing a woman her husband’s ashes in a shopping bag is just part of the description, I guess. Then he turned around, and I thought Clint was going to offer some sort of condolences, something more appropriate to the moment. Something approaching emotion or even the sacredness of it. Instead, he said, “If you change your mind about interning his ashes here at the cemetery, we can arrange for that.” I heard myself say again, “Thank you, but no, Pat did not want to be buried.”

With Clint back in the funeral home, I grabbed the grey bag and held it close, and I forced myself to accept that this was my husband, this is was that was left of him. Then I started to wail and shake in the funeral home parking lot. I fumbled for my car keys and could not get the car to start. I wanted to leave and get Pat home but all I could do was hit the steering wheel and curse Pat for leaving me with his “no fuss” farewells. How could the remarkable man who shared my life with me for three decades now be shrink- wrapped in the car seat next to me.

Was this Pat’s way of making me let go, forcing me see how our lives together were over and that he was nothing but ashes in four cardboard boxes. Pat’s modesty is well known, but even for him, this seemed extreme.

I tried to think of what Pat would have thought if it all, and for once, I could not guess what Pat’s reaction would be to my predicament. Maybe he would have thought it was funny, but mostly, I guessed he would have been angry at how upset I was. I think he might have placed the blame with Clint and the funeral home for not doing their job better. But, I did not know how Pat would feel about this, and that scared me. Could my connection to him be severed so quickly?

It was terrible driving home with Pat, I was crying so much I feared I would crash the car. Lifting the bag out of the car and bringing it into the house was surreal, Camille saw me and was ashen (another pun, sorry), when she heard me crying and I explained what I carried. She seemed to recoil at what her father’s body had become.

I ran upstairs to the bedroom, holding the shopping bag right up to my chest, and cleared a spot on the bureau for Pat.

I called my friend Julie and she talked me through some practical advice about how to work with ashes. Julie’s sister-in-law had also been cremated, and Julie had helped her nieces and nephew bring their mother’s ashes to the sea. In that case, the family had not divided the ashes ahead of time, so fulfilling her sister-in-law’s wishes ended up involving Tupperware. In that moment, I was grateful for the bag and the four boxes. Julie advised me to order a proper container for Pat. Fortunately, my cousin Frances told me Etsy sells urns and even jewelry for ashes (Etsy really does have everything).

So I picked out four simple wooden boxes for Pat’s remains. The box would just have his name and his dates of birth and death. Could not get much more simple than that, it seemed to me.

I called the florist and ordered white hydrangeas and lilies to be delivered to the house.

Pat now has a place of honor in our bedroom, not far from where he died.

Cal’s nurse, Peggy, helped picked out some photos of the children to keep him company before he heads off to Ireland, Colorado, and Liverpool. She suggested a candle might be nice, and once again I went shopping at Etsy.

Julie called me later to check in, and I was calmer, but still angry with Pat.

Julie did not want me to blame Pat. “Pat was so practical,” she said, “he wanted to make things easier for you.” The thing is, as carefully as he planned things, there was no way for him to have known what would happen, and what he was asking.