I stood at the threshold of the chapel when the funeral began. Milt was nervous, but he did an excellent job offering a few readings and reflections—kind words that gathered up drips and drams of Sheila Carrington’s life and offered them up to the small congregation, perhaps fifty people, who had gathered in clusters overlooking the casket. There was nothing particularly inspiring about Milt’s presentation, his simple reflections about Sheila Carrington’s life, but there were tears when Milt noted the irony of the situation.
“What a tragic day,” he said at one point. “We have come here to remember Sheila and now we find that Phil died in the night. We’re shaken. Most of us knew the Carringtons as great employers. We’re going to miss them. But I think most of us are also wondering about the ice company. What’s going to happen now?”
From my vantage point in the back of the chapel, I studied the thin crowd. There was an oddity to the gathering, a kind of melancholia that was tinged with other emotion—uncertainty, perhaps, or a veneer of formality that hovered on the precipice of boredom. It was as if many were in attendance out of obligation rather than concern, a show of inconvenience.
There was the one man dressed in a business suit, but otherwise attire was casual, almost to the point of carelessness. A few of the men—perhaps warehouse workers or delivery truck drivers—were wearing steel-toed boots and thermal overalls. But then, it was cold outside, and perhaps even colder in the ice house. There was a woman checking messages on her cell phone, and another young man—a stocky kid with an equestrian build and penetrating stare—wore a sweat shirt sporting the company logo. Only one woman—fiftyish and dyed, a long-legged beauty with heavy eye liner and flaming red lipstick—wore a black dress. And as I looked more introspectively at the small crowd, I could also see additional yawns and darting glances as Milt rounded out his eulogy.
As Milt closed, there were many who were nodding their heads. One fellow, in the dark business suit, choked back a sob. There was the hush of voices as Milt finished his eulogy and more whispers when he said, “I’m sure we’ll see each other soon at Phil’s funeral. So. So . . . until then.”
The funeral service complete, I re-entered the room and invited people to file by the casket a final time. A few paused, but most strode quickly by with an air of determination, perhaps an unwillingness to pause so near to death. It was a quick service—not more than fifteen minutes—and, without the amenities of song or liturgy, the words themselves simply flowed by as a stream of consciousness.
Most people gathered up their coats and departed. Only a handful—including Milt—remained behind to process to the cemetery for the burial. The flourish through the front doors was quick and energetic, as if the group were returning to more pressing concerns, or perhaps to work.
I wrapped my scarf around my neck and glanced outside. Lance, always faithful, was waiting for me in the patrol car. Although he had never served as a cemetery escort before, he was unfazed, his confidence oozing from his greeting when I sidled up next to the window in the vaporous cold. He smiled at me. “I hope this won’t be a regular fixture of our relationship,” he said. “I’d rather be out hand-cuffing bad guys.”
“I promise . . . just this once,” I told him. “You know the way?”
“Piece of cake,” he said. “And as you say . . . it’s not far.”
I returned to the hearse, gave instructions to the pall bearers as we loaded Sheila Carrington’s casket into the back. I shut the door and said the parting instructions: “We will follow the patrol car. Please turn out your headlights and flashers. When we get to the cemetery, please return to the back of the hearse.” Everyone—mostly old men in black suits—walked away in silence and loaded into their cars.
And then we were off.
It was a short drive across town, just a few minutes—made all the easier due to Lance’s fine escort—and then we unloaded, placed the casket at the grave site, and huddled under a small tent while Milt intoned a few Bible readings and said a hasty, but heartfelt, prayer. The light was in the sky, but everyone—old and bone-weary—was aching from the deep freeze and a slight gust of west-born wind that raked at the tent flaps and set our teeth on edge.
Lance waved goodbye and hastened away from the cemetery toward warmer digs, the last of the morning easing into afternoon. I said goodbye to Milt and the pallbearers and then slipped away in the hearse, realizing that I would likely see the same crew again at Phil Carrington’s funeral.
Driving the short distance through town, I noted a new billboard near the interstate. This one by an accident-and-injury lawyer touting huge settlements. He was running a New Year’s special—offering free consultation for motorcycle accident victims. “I’ll bury them,” I thought . . . but he’ll get the money after.
When I returned to the funeral home and had settled into the office, Rose stated the obvious. “Had you known about both deaths in advance,” she said, “you could have offered two funerals for the price of one.”
“That does seem valid,” I said. “There are lawyers who advertise specials all the time. But I don’t know about Phil’s arrangements. There doesn’t seem to be any family involved in these decisions. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“You always make it work,” Rose answered. We retreated to the chapel and cleaned up the last of the flowers—beautiful roses, pink lilies, a majestic spray of white carnations. “It’s too bad so many of these flowers go to waste. Would you mind if I found a secondary use for them?”
“Not at all,” I said. “You have something in mind?”
“I’d like to get these to the nursing homes,” she said. “Brighten some despair.”
“Perfect,” I answered.
For her age, Rose was still nimble, her fingers parting flower stems and rearranging them into new format. She had an eye for color and detail—an artistic flair. She also seemed preoccupied, deep in thought. I watched her, the way she created the new from the old, but realized she was thinking about other matters.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked. “You seem deep in thought.”
“Well,” she began. “I don’t know if I should say anything. But Milt and I had quite a little chat in the office before the funeral.”
“Oh?” I reached for a blue orchid.
“He was tight-lipped at first, very nervous about speaking, just staring at his coffee. I was asking about his family, his work . . . just small talk. But he didn’t have much to say about Sheila Carrington.”
“I don’t think he knew her well,” I offered. “Phil was his friend and his boss. I think he knew Sheila by association.”
“Yes,” Rose said, reaching for a tall sprig of baby’s breath, “but he seemed kind of distant. When I asked him about Phil Carrington, about doing his funeral in a few days, he seemed perplexed.”
“It was a shock,” I reminded her. “He’d just learned about Phil a few minutes before he sat down for coffee.”
“No,” Rose said. “It was more than that.”
“How so?”
“He seemed angered by his death. Like something sinister was afoot.”
I pondered the idea. Sighed. “Everyone grieves in different ways,” I said. “As you know, anger is a part of grief. Death is quite a shock to the emotions. Could be he simply didn’t have the resources to process it all . . . seeing as how he was steadying himself to speak at Sheila’s funeral.”
“You could be right,” Rose said. “But . . . ”
“But what?”
“He kept telling me how unfair it was. How Phil’s death was going to change everything. I think he was talking about the business.”
“I guess things might be quite different at the ice company come Monday,” I said. “Or maybe he knows how much Phil is going to be missed.”
“Perhaps,” Rose said. “Perhaps.”
We were deep in the throes of making new flower arrangements from the cast offs. After twenty minutes, we’d created several nice displays and dropped them into vases. Rose seemed pleased. “These will bring a few smiles. I’ll run these by the home on my way out.”
“You’re so thoughtful,” I said.
I helped Rose load the vases into the back seat of her car, warming them first inside cardboard boxes. I checked the time. Lunch seemed like a good idea, but I still had some weight to lose and there would soon be new arrangements to make for Phil Carrington. That, and I wanted to be in the office when Blanch called back with her full forensic report.
“See you tomorrow morning?” I asked before Rose departed.
“I’ll be here at eight,” Rose told me. “You and Lance have a good night.”
I nodded. But I wasn’t thinking about the night so much as Lance himself. Dealing in death, gratitude seemed to well up inside of me, all around me, and I felt overpowered by the prospects of my own life and those who loved me. And I realized, as Rose drove away toward the nursing home, that my hunger wasn’t so much for sustenance as it was for love, for all that Lance and I enjoyed, but also for the blessings of these new and old friendships that were attached to the long arc of my life. Lance was becoming the center of my thoughts, however—and I was grateful that we were, at last, charting a course toward the tangled web of marriage.