The Green Green Grass, part 2 - the pre-assessment

I pushed the hangup icon on the phone and said to my husband, "They call it a 'pre-assessment.'" He asked if we were going to be fitted for coffins. "They'll at least take our measurements,"  I assured him.

The day of the appointment, it rained all day. We wrapped ourselves up and got into the car to drive to the cemetery. There was a tulip exhibition in the cemetery chapel, so we took some time to walk through the pretty arrangements, each with a discreet card indicating the florist, for future reference. We were enjoying a flower-arranging demonstration when I looked at my watch. Time to go. Thud, my heart dropped. No. Never mind. Not going.

But we went. The woman whose job it was to talk to us about our deaths was a robust, professional young woman.  I could imagine her going out to happy hour after work, laughing with her girlfriends. She used the word "neat" a lot.

I told her I liked to walk in the cemetery, and thought buying a plot might be a way to ensure that it lives on after me. I kept to myself the shy tender hope that when I'm gone, someone might come to sit near what used to be me, and enjoy the green grass and the view of the hills and the memories. I also didn't tell her about the times I had illegally climbed through a hole in the chain link fence in order to come in the back way, through the dirt area with the old tombstones, some of them made of wood. And I didn't mention the time I found a bone at the bottom of a slope beneath the graves. She seemed too good-hearted and guileless to share all that with.

We talked about plots and prices, and which lots had openings, and I learned about cremation plots, where you can have your ashes buried in a living place, not a box in a mausoleum or an urn on the mantelpiece. I asked her about the dirt areas in the far back of the cemetery. Those are the "unendowed" parts, she explained, for those whose families hadn't paid for upkeep, back in the 1800's. She told us about a woman, a volunteer who had ancestors buried there, who was dedicated to clearing out brush and planting trees in that wild section, and said "I think that's really neat!" I started to think that some things really are neat.

 It was when we got to the word "casket" that things got real. It was the feeling you might get if someone said the word "pussy" in casual conversation - before it was rendered harmless by the hats - embarrassing, awkward, a little scary: how far are we going to take this? She  asked us if we would like to look at the casket book. Maybe everyone feels scared and awkward about caskets, because she hadn't brought out the book for us, and had to go get it. I wondered how basic a box you could get away with. According to the casket book, the most basic box looked like a beautiful, finely-crafted piece of furniture. I asked if you could have someone just build you a box. This seemed to be a new question for our funeral guide. After a moment she confided to us that some clients bought their caskets at Costco. I could see doing that, although I thought I would prefer the classic homemade pine box. I started feeling a little more relaxed. She gave us "planning guides," full of checklists and blank lines that we will put off filling out. We talked about Piedmont Funeral Services' nebulous plan to offer "green burials," that let your unboxed ashes actually return to Mother Earth (whole bodies are more problematic) at some point in the vague future. 

The vague future; that's where we're headed. Knowing that somewhere, far ahead of us we hope, the vagueness will lift, and we'll arrive at the ends of our futures. We got in the car and took a rainy drive around the cemetery, looking at the fountains, the small reservoirs, the wet grassy hills. Then we went home, turned on the lights and put some leftovers on the stove to heat. We stood by the furnace and dried out and had a familiar, comfortable hug. The present felt solid and good.