A Poor Goodbye

 

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.