Bloom after chilling
The crocuses poked through the last snowfall of the season, orange and purple blooms closed like colored pencil tips, wet and translucent. I’d forgotten all about them. I’d buried their corms in the cold ground the same day dad died. Back in early November, just before the first good frost.
I remember thinking it was a little late in the season for planting. But what harm could come of it? I dug with a shovel, chucked them in, smoothed over the dirt. Five minutes later, the phone rang. I was still outside, my gloved fingers removing the mud caked beneath my boots.
I listened to the nurse, accepted the inevitable, then called the funeral home. Death is filled with mundane details you remember, and a bunch of little ones you don’t which end up taking so much time. I’ve buried both my parents now; it never goes as quickly as you hope. Writing the obituary, arranging the memorial service, pouring over details of the will. The fact all this has to happen before, during and immediately after the funeral means your grieving process is either warped or postponed, which causes further delays.
The worst formality is the bureaucratic process that comes with being executor of a will. It’s enough to turn even the most evangelical liberal who swears their allegiance to big government into a staunch Libertarian. If you are going to die, please do it early in the week. If it happens on a Thursday or Friday it means the person you left in charge will probably have to wait until Monday or Tuesday before you can get an appointment at the county courthouse. Death is not only sad, it’s terribly inconvenient.
You’ll drive out of your way to a building you’ve never visited for a swearing in session to become legally responsible for everything. Then there’s the trip to the bank to open the special estate account and the lawyer advice that “if we pay the taxes now then we’ll save a half a percent.” You’ll also discover you need to purchase death certificates, and you’ll either get too many and waste money or not enough and have to purchase for more later because there is no Goldie Locks “just the right temperature of porridge” equivalent to death certificates
You will realize that no business will take your word that a loved one has died. Not the person who works for Macy’s corporate, even though your loved one’s credit card hadn’t been used since 2003. Not the local banks, even though the tellers gossiped about how badly your loved one looked in their last days. Even the old folk’s home where the person gave up the ghost will need proof. Same with subscriptions cancellations. As you will learn, this includes newspaper subscriptions. You will also resist the urge to tell the person on the other end to go fuck themselves after they attempt to sell you a subscription.
Everyone you meet during this time will offer their sincere condolences which you’ll simultaneously believe are hollow because they have to be said, and sincere because what human wouldn’t offer such sentiments? Their actions will be wrong or will have more meaning and touch you more than intended. This all comes down to your frame of mind, not theirs. Reminding yourself f this will make no difference.
You will inevitably be required to sign and mail or fax forms. If said loved one lives out of state and yours is a “destination funeral,” you will spend more time in FedEx/Kinkos than most people. You will also find yourself wondering a few hundred times why the majority of this (including funeral arrangements) can’t be done online since its 2019. You can get food and a ride share service with the touch of an app, after all. You’ll endure it all, including the weird formality of the memorial service, funeral procession and burial. A year later, if there are no formalities or hang ups, you will finally close the estate account and this will be your real closure. Until the next death happens. In which case you’ll be able to handle it twenty-percent better, except for the impatience of it all.
If I’d gotten the phone call a half hour before, I might have waited until the funeral to plant the corms. I think of it now as an subconscious tribute. He was eighty-six and in failing health. Death was inevitable. It was only a matter of time. Why shouldn’t that have been the same time when I was planting seeds in the earth? Even if it is looking for meaning in something that doesn’t need extra meaning.
Dad was eighty-sixed at eighty-six. Since mom was a writer she would have appreciated the world play. But she died back in 2013 at seventy-two. When she died, I very deliberately looked for a fitting way to honor her name. Her death ripped me apart, I needed some ritual to right the sales.
She’d always wanted to go to Israel, a trip she’d never been able to take. It remained an unfulfilled wish like most things on her wish list. When I read about an Israeli organization that uses donations to plant fruit trees, I bought three in her name. Even if she couldn’t make it in person to the promised land, so to speak, she did so in spirit.
I don’t know if the trees were planted from seed; They might still have some years to go before they bear fruit, depending on the fruit. Either way I have pictured them as stoic stewards of continuity, enduring the seasons (both natural and political) as they hopefully grew stronger and taller.
Mom’s trees took a while to flower. She was a lte bloomer, too. The opposite of dad who became a man at an early age and whose flowers came up just a few months later. Both will continue grace the earth for several more years to come.
After the deaths of two parents, I’ve come to two conclusions. The first is that my impatience at government bureaucracy in this matter is one hundred percent justified. People should die with dignity and that includes the settling of their affairs after death. The second conclusion is that all deaths of loved ones should be accompanied by the planting of a blooming perennial. They are a wonderful surprise after the chill that accompanies grief, and helps the griever get better with each passing season.