The
chapel was less than a third full and everyone was careful not to
look too closely at the walls with their flaking paint, the chips on
the edges of the pews, the threadbare carpet or the windows which
could surely could have stood a good cleaning, inside and out. There
was a suggestion of air freshener pretty much everywhere but it
didn’t quite cover the smell of what could only have been decay.
The men stood around with wrinkled noses and the women clutched their
delicately lavender scented handkerchiefs close to their faces.
The
dearly departed, laid out in a pricey mahogany casket with gleaming
gold handles and rose colored insides, looked a trifle clownish. Her
makeup was badly overdone and flaking just like the walls. Her
eyebrows were clearly drawn on in a shade that didn’t match her
freshly permed hair and her lipstick had been slightly smeared at the
corners of her mouth.
There
was something distinctly sideshow-like about her coldly folded
crepe-ish but multi ringed hands and the single strand of pearls
coiled neatly over her flouncy pale blue blouse.
In
life, she had been a poor but elegant, polished, and fashion
conscious woman whose daughter had married an exceedingly but newly
wealthy oilman. In death, she was a neglected husk of a woman whom
no one had loved, a hanger-on whose only claim to fame was a stunning
but coldhearted and greedy daughter who had crawled and clawed her
way across the wrong side of the tracks and snagged herself a
millionaire. Three obligatory children, several gated community
homes and a half dozen Mercedes convertibles later, she
packed
her designer wardrobe and fabulous jewels and moved out of the
communal bedroom to her own wing of the latest mansion. She could
have moved her mother into a separate home but instead she had a
small but functional guest house built and installed her there,
proving as several of her society friends had been heard to
discreetly say, money can buy you happiness and homes and diamonds
and fast cars but not class or breeding.
When
the service was finished, the funeral home director thanked everyone
for coming and asked that the pall bearers step up to carry the
casket out. Regretfully, she had, as best anyone could tell,
forgotten to make the actual arrangements for pall bearers and when
no one moved, she seemed to realize her error and had no choice but
to ask for volunteers. After a moment or two of shock, several men
rose and moved awkwardly forward. The daughter, already seething
from rage and shame at her firstborn’s failure to attend – knee
walking drunk, the night before, it was not discreetly whispered and
too hungover to be there – followed the casket out, her face an
outright glare of iced over anger. She stalked to a waiting
limousine and ignoring everyone and everything around her, adeptly
slipped inside.
It
was a sad day, a hard day all around. The shabbiness of the
neglected chapel, the ineptitude of the funeral home, the
indifference of family and the lack of mourners was a poor goodbye.
