Mrs. Whidden's Wake

Inside the funeral home it was cool and dark and almost eerily quiet.  The central air hummed  so efficiently and discreetly that it barely stirred the heavy drapes and the thick carpet muffled any other sounds. The telephones rang softly, low and muted like voices from another room and even the front doorbell chimed delicately as if from a great distance.  It smelled of furniture polish and flowers.  Death commanded respect in this once elegant and gracious old building, now shabby in places and outdated but still a place of comfort for the sorrowful, the grieving, the ones left behind.

These were the public rooms.  A small front office with two leather chairs, an old desk and a non-working fireplace.   A chapel with stained glass windows and an organ.  Two visitation rooms.  Upstairs another smaller office and four more understated and dimly lit rooms.  And beyond that, through heavy doors that were always closed and marked PRIVATE, living quarters for the staff and interns who were on call 24 hours of every day.  A tiny tv room, a tinier kitchen, a few closet sized cubbyholes with bunkbeds, the morgue.  It was here we spent our evenings when my daddy had to work and my mother was out at her numerous lodge meetings.  The two sides - one so well appointed and designed, the other spartan and plain - were kept carefully separate.

When the service was over, my daddy would collect us but on the night of Mrs. Whidden’s wake, he had leftover paperwork to finish and we were allowed the run of the place.   We crept through the doors that divided the public and private areas and made our way downstairs.  The boys started a wild game of tag but I tiptoed into the chapel.  Apart from my great grandmother who had died a long and lingering death over the course of one summer, I’d never seen a dead body and I was too young to understand death.  Curiosity killed the cat, I could hear my mother saying, but I went in anyway.

A casket lay in the half-light.  I could see the white satin lining and gleaming brass handles.  Light from the stain glass windows played on the glowing mahogany and made pastel shadows that danced through the flower baskets and wreaths, some even played on the body, making prisms from the rosary beads twined through her peacefully clasped hands.  She wore a simple navy dress with a rounded white collar and white cuffs.  A pearl choker lay across her throat with matching earrings and a smooth gold band sparkled on the third finger of her left hand.  On her right there was a delicate looking and finely etched cameo ring.  Her fingernails were manicured, her hair framed her face in soft-looking silver ringlets, there was a hint of blue shadow on her closed eyes.

 My daddy, elegantly attired in his three piece dark grey suit and polished black shoes, took my hand in his and gave me a sad-eyed smile.

“This is Mrs. Whidden.” he said quietly.

“She’s dead.” I said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, my, yes, “ he agreed and very nearly smiled, “She certainly is.  But doesn’t she look well for her age and condition.  You’d think she was sleeping.”

I considered this. 

“She was very old.” I ventured, thinking that you might think many things of Mrs. Whidden, but definitely not that she was sleeping.  Not with those rouged cheeks and the makeup seeped into the creases of her face, not with that look of powder and dust that might be blown away by a single too-near or careless breath.  Not with those wrinkled, papery hands clutching those beads.  Everything about her was proper and demure and very ladylike but she was clearly, most assuredly, no question about it, not asleep.

“Ninety-two,” my daddy said, “Died in her sleep, at home in her own bed.” 

There was something almost wistful in the way he spoke, something like hope or maybe gratitude.  It didn’t fit with the paper mache-ish body in the satin-lined casket.  I watched him slowly lower the upper half of the coffin and latch it, leaving Mrs. Whidden alone and in the dark.  I was suddenly out of curiosity and filled with fright.

“God was kind to her,” my daddy said more to himself than to me.

I was seized by a need to be picked up and held, to be comforted, but before I could reach my arms up to him, there was a wild yell, a violent thump, and a howl of pain.  The temptation of the sleekly curved old bannister had been too much for one of my brothers - he had mounted and flown down it like a shrieking roller coaster ride - but now lay in a tearful heap at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Good God,” my daddy exclaimed, “You’ll wake the dead!”

It was, I realized, standing in the darkened chapel alone except for Mrs. Whidden, exactly what I was afraid of.   Gently and watchfully, I began backing away from the casket, one small step at a time, feeling my way and never taking my eyes off it.  Then unaccountably, my daddy realized what he’d said and began to laugh, a cheerful, genuine sound that I followed into the light.  He was standing by the front door, my brother clinging to one trousered leg and sniffling. 

“No offense, Mrs. Whidden,” he managed but he was still laughing and it was several minutes before he regained his composure. 

Looking back, I doubt she minded, ‘course you never know.