touch its hair or hands, feel how cold it is. Neil hates theword
closure
but it’s apt. If you don’t see the body, it’s as if it was lost at sea and you can harbour dreams that your loved one is still alive on some desert island with a coconut tree sending messages in bottles like in a
New Yorker
cartoon. What makes an undertaker different from a casket salesman or event planner is that he understands the central role of the dead man in his own drama.
When his uncle died, Neil took care of the arrangements. When it was done, his aunt studied the bill and challenged him on one of the items: the removal of the body. It doesn’t make sense for you to charge for this, she told him. After all, I would think it’s in your interest to pick up the body. I shouldn’t have to pay for it. Her children, Neil’s cousins, rolled their eyes. Years later she attended a funeral at the Aubrey chapel. When the pianist played “The Lost Chord,” she laid her head on her sister’s shoulder, said, “That’s nice,” and quietly died. Again Neil handled the logistics, and when he presented his cousins with the bill, they pointed to the removal charge. She died in your funeral home, they said.
We pass grain fields, more grain fields, then cattle country. A billboard tells us L IFE IS S ACRED FROM C ONCEPTION TO N ATURAL D EATH .
“This law-firm idea,” I say. “What does Eirik think of it?”
Neil looks ahead. “He doesn’t know yet.”
His cell phone rings. It’s pop. The man we just delivered is missing his wedding ring. The viewing is tonight. Neil tells me to check his briefcase, and there I find the valuables envelope from the Health Sciences Centre, the one we were supposed to have left at pop’s. I can feel the ring. We turn around on the empty highway and head back to Roblin.
R ESPECT , D IGNITY AND B LACK U NDERPANTS
I
n Winnipeg there are two types of obituaries, the “shorts” and the “longs.” “Shorts” run in the weekday
Free Press
and are little more than service announcements, written by under takers according to a template: who died, who’s got the body, relevant times and dates for the viewing and funeral. “Longs” are written by families and each one can cover six column inches, with photographs, packed with trivia and detail, the best of them wandering cryptically, begging you to read between the lines. Sometimes it’s clear they were written in advance, by the soon-to-be-deceased. The man who “didn’t ask for much in life” but loved his cats Chester and Tickles and his wife Joanne left it to the reader to figure out why they were billed in that order. The “longs” are a local folk art. If you die in Winnipeg it is with some consolation that no matter how haphazard and coincidental your life is or seems to you while youare living it, it will all make narrative sense when they publish your “long.” At last, you become the hero in your own story.
Annie and I had a ritual. On Saturdays, if I wasn’t working, I’d make coffee and she’d spread out the weekend obits and have at them with a yellow marker, reading out the highlights.
“This one’s days consisted of walking his dog Oreo, washing his car and bargain hunting,” she tells me. “This one was a bookkeeper for the airport chaplain. She enjoyed her dinner and had a last loving phone conversation with her sister, when she became very tired and slipped quietly away.”
“During the phone conversation?”
“They don’t say.”
A “fiercely loyal” mom who loved romance novels, soft loving touches, red lipstick kisses on birthday cards and lottery tickets shares a page with a man who preferred farm implements: “The first combine he used was a pull-type Case combine with the first day of combining taking place on August 24, 1945. He continued to operate combines for the next 63 years ending with operating a Case 2388 combine this fall for a good portion of the 2007 harvest.” The “longs” were like condensed
closure
but it’s apt. If you don’t see the body, it’s as if it was lost at sea and you can harbour dreams that your loved one is still alive on some desert island with a coconut tree sending messages in bottles like in a
New Yorker
cartoon. What makes an undertaker different from a casket salesman or event planner is that he understands the central role of the dead man in his own drama.
When his uncle died, Neil took care of the arrangements. When it was done, his aunt studied the bill and challenged him on one of the items: the removal of the body. It doesn’t make sense for you to charge for this, she told him. After all, I would think it’s in your interest to pick up the body. I shouldn’t have to pay for it. Her children, Neil’s cousins, rolled their eyes. Years later she attended a funeral at the Aubrey chapel. When the pianist played “The Lost Chord,” she laid her head on her sister’s shoulder, said, “That’s nice,” and quietly died. Again Neil handled the logistics, and when he presented his cousins with the bill, they pointed to the removal charge. She died in your funeral home, they said.
We pass grain fields, more grain fields, then cattle country. A billboard tells us L IFE IS S ACRED FROM C ONCEPTION TO N ATURAL D EATH .
“This law-firm idea,” I say. “What does Eirik think of it?”
Neil looks ahead. “He doesn’t know yet.”
His cell phone rings. It’s pop. The man we just delivered is missing his wedding ring. The viewing is tonight. Neil tells me to check his briefcase, and there I find the valuables envelope from the Health Sciences Centre, the one we were supposed to have left at pop’s. I can feel the ring. We turn around on the empty highway and head back to Roblin.
R ESPECT , D IGNITY AND B LACK U NDERPANTS
I
n Winnipeg there are two types of obituaries, the “shorts” and the “longs.” “Shorts” run in the weekday
Free Press
and are little more than service announcements, written by under takers according to a template: who died, who’s got the body, relevant times and dates for the viewing and funeral. “Longs” are written by families and each one can cover six column inches, with photographs, packed with trivia and detail, the best of them wandering cryptically, begging you to read between the lines. Sometimes it’s clear they were written in advance, by the soon-to-be-deceased. The man who “didn’t ask for much in life” but loved his cats Chester and Tickles and his wife Joanne left it to the reader to figure out why they were billed in that order. The “longs” are a local folk art. If you die in Winnipeg it is with some consolation that no matter how haphazard and coincidental your life is or seems to you while youare living it, it will all make narrative sense when they publish your “long.” At last, you become the hero in your own story.
Annie and I had a ritual. On Saturdays, if I wasn’t working, I’d make coffee and she’d spread out the weekend obits and have at them with a yellow marker, reading out the highlights.
“This one’s days consisted of walking his dog Oreo, washing his car and bargain hunting,” she tells me. “This one was a bookkeeper for the airport chaplain. She enjoyed her dinner and had a last loving phone conversation with her sister, when she became very tired and slipped quietly away.”
“During the phone conversation?”
“They don’t say.”
A “fiercely loyal” mom who loved romance novels, soft loving touches, red lipstick kisses on birthday cards and lottery tickets shares a page with a man who preferred farm implements: “The first combine he used was a pull-type Case combine with the first day of combining taking place on August 24, 1945. He continued to operate combines for the next 63 years ending with operating a Case 2388 combine this fall for a good portion of the 2007 harvest.” The “longs” were like condensed
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