chapter 42
Gus
Dad died quickly.
Almost like a movie.
Somehow we’d turned on every light in the house.
It wasn’t a decision any of us had consciously made. It just happened. As if the incandescent glow would drive off a spiritual darkness that would infest the house and our very souls.
The hall scones had come on first, before he’d passed. Then the big chandelier over the round table in the foyer. But they only chased the shadows into the corners of the other rooms. Soon every lamp in the mauve room and the blue room, the office and family rooms had been flicked on, one by one, their electric vigil heralding the separation of a soul from its body.
Decca came to me after I’d said the Trisagion. She molded her small body against mine, holding me up. I’d surely collapse without her.
The few hours after his passing were a liminal time. All of us in the same room, processing that Dad was no longer in his body.
There was silence. There was laughter. There were shots of Fireball, for some stupid reason.
Then came time for the worst part, and the house went still.
Ma sat on the sofa in the blue room, staring straight ahead into the void, one hand holding Yia-Yiá‘s, the other propped against her temple, a crumpled tissue in her fist.
Waylon was on the other end, his crossed legs stretched out in front of him, watching his daughter. Athena, blissfully unaware of the late hour, or what was happening, squawked joyfully as she played with her stacking cups on the floor.
Emma and Monica, the apprentices, sat on the basement steps, holding hands and waiting to step in if they were needed. Death calls would divert to other mortuaries for the next week.
God grant George and Bethany strength when they come back to work.
In the hallway outside the door to the embalming room, Bethany was crying silently, her hand clamped over her mouth.
She gestured to the door. “He…” she sobbed. “He said he needed a minute alone. I didn’t know if I should or not, but…” She shook her head, unable to continue.
There was no need to continue. Who knew what any of us needed right now? Especially what George might need. It was impossible, the task he was about to do.
I cupped her elbow and nodded.
“George and I undressed him.” She sniffed. “It was a lot.”
“I’m so grateful you’re here,” I said to her. It wasn’t enough.
No words were.
George’s back was to me as I entered the embalming room.
His arms were crossed. His head was low. No movement came from his body, like he wasn’t even breathing.
“George?”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said softly. His voice was breaking, and the silence in the room made his words ring. “No one asked me if I wanted to embalm my own father.”
“You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
“I’m not as unfeeling as everyone thinks.”
“No one thinks that.”
He snorted and shook his head.
“We’ll take our time,” I said.
George lifted his head and turned to me. “You?”
I nodded. I hadn’t planned to help with Dad’s embalming. I hadn’t prepared a body since mortuary school, and I’d hated every minute of it, but this was different. Looking at George’s crumpled face, he needed me to be here with him.
George’s eyes were red and glossy. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen my brother cry. And he wasn’t crying now, but he had been, and he probably needed to cry some more. Really let it all out. “Thanks,” he said, exhaling with what looked like relief.
Soula burst through the door wearing scrubs and a gown. “I know, I know. I’m not supposed to be in here, but I’ve sutured plenty of long bone donations when I was in med school, and if anyone knows how to raise a blood vessel, it’s me. Licensed or not, this is my house. And I’m not letting you embalm our father without me.”
I smiled at George, who looked at me. “This was the way Dad always wanted it,” he said. “The three of us working together.”
“Okay then.” I nodded. “What should we listen to?” I opened my music app and connected it to the Bluetooth speaker in the corner. It wasn’t the old boom box Dad had used for decades, but it would play the same songs.
“Garth Brooks,” Soula and George answered in unison.
It was the same Greatest Hits album we’d been listening to—in the same room—since childhood, when we’d cover our eyes and shout through the door for dad to come up for dinner.
“Ain’t Goin’ Down” put us all into a better mood as we donned gloves, gowns, and masks. Soula and I cried as we lowered the drape to uncover Dad’s body to the first chords of “Friends in Low Places,” just like he’d done for decades with thousands of other bodies.
The disinfectant was the worst part. Spraying the blue stuff into his mouth and nose made it all… permanent. There was no going back after this. He was really gone.
George stood across from me and winced after the first spray. He froze as if expecting Dad to sit up and spit out the toxic chemical. But his bearings came back quickly.
I took over the bathing of his body with more disinfecting soap. I shampooed his hair gently, trying not to tear his paper-thin skin. I held his hand, so familiar, yet unrealistically cool and pale, since the blood had pooled elsewhere. I scrubbed under his fingernails, and used a sponge and warm water to clean his body everywhere.
It was surprisingly shameless, this process. He wasn’t infantilized by my care of his body. None of us were embarrassed by his nudity. It was honoring; the best way I could actively convey my gratitude for the years he’d loved me.
Soula had some difficulty, but managed to raise the jugular vein and carotid arteries halfway through “If Tomorrow Never Comes.”
We splurged on the expensive cream to massage Dad’s skin, while George mixed up a cocktail of thirty-three index arterial fluid, humectants, and other specialized chemicals in the embalming machine.
Somehow, it began the process of normalizing the death of our father.
The rest of the album was accompanied by the fluctuating whir of the machine as we sat around the room, re-telling favorite stories about Dad’s mishaps.
When the album ended, we let it play again. None of us were willing to leave him alone.
This was our vigil.
It was intimate and sad and cathartic. My siblings and I needed these hours of togetherness with Dad’s body. Taking the same care of him that we’d—well, George anyway—had done for so many others. It was safe here to laugh while one of us was crying, or to cry in the middle of a joke.
It was good.
When the machine was finished, George eyed the trocar. “You might want to leave for this.”
“Do you want Bethany in here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You’re right. I’ll regret it if I don’t.” There was a pause as he stared at the long hollow tube with the pointed end.
Soula nodded at him, already crying and reaching out for my hand.
George swallowed hard, his chest shaking. His eyes grew frantic as he stepped closer to Dad, placing an apologetic, almost prayerful hand on his abdomen. Tears rolled down his cheek onto his mask the moment he punctured the cavity, ramming the trocar into the space just above the belly button, aiming it down into the intestines to aspirate anything left behind after arterial embalming. It had to be done. Any bacteria left behind would lead to leakage, bloating, and disaster in the casket by Wednesday’s viewing.
The puncture to the gut was violent. The aspirating was even worse. I turned away, leaning my forehead against the wall with my arms crossed.
Like a soldier, Soula looked on. She was brave. She was used to this. Used to worse. She could compartmentalize, remove the fact that it was Dad on that table, somehow set aside the horror of it.
George had more difficulty. His arm stilled several times. He threw off his respirator and lunged for the trash can.
When it was finally over, I opened the door.
Bethany was still sitting in the hallway, facing the door. Her Doc Martens planted on the concrete and back against the wall. She wasn’t crying anymore, but her eyes were puffy, and her skin was red.
“Have you been out here the whole time?” It had been hours since we’d started the embalming.
“I didn’t know if he’d need me. I was worried when I heard the trocar.”
I sank down on the floor next to her. “He did great.”
She nodded. “I know.” The pride in her husband shone out of her eyes. “I could never… well, I could definitely embalm my own father. But not if my dad was Jim.”
“I don’t exactly know where he pulled the strength from, but I’m sure you were a big part of it.”
“No,” she said. “That’s all him.”
We sat for a while. Finally, I broke the silence. With the thing that had been lurking in the back of my mind for the last twenty-four hours. I shouldn’t have been thinking about it. I should have been a devoted son, and let no thoughts other than the death of my father take hold, but today might still hold yet another loss, and I couldn’t bear losing them both.
“I can’t do this without her.”
“The funeral?”
“The funeral. Ministry. Life.” I scraped at a paint splotch on my knee. I’d worn my blacks to the house, as if I was on duty. It was second nature now.
George had lent me a set of his old, non-stretchy, hospital issue scrubs—apparently ones he’d painted in at some point. They squeezed my thighs uncomfortably. “I pushed her into this, thinking I was being selfless. I thought I could recover from losing her, because making the moral choice would give me comfort. Now that I had a glimpse of her being gone, even for just a few hours, I can’t possibly… she’s changed my life so much that without her, it would be nothing, just… empty.”
“She needs to hear that from you.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Sure you do. Decca, I love you. Please don’t leave me. Easy.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes, it is. It’s only your pride and your ego telling you otherwise. Or maybe a little devil on your shoulder.” She smirked. “Is that doctrinally sound?”
“If your doctrine is Looney Tunes. But the concept is… surprisingly valid.”
“Stop pushing her away, Gus. Stop trying to convince yourself you’re standing in her way. When people fall in love, they want different things. Priorities shift. That’s how it’s supposed to work. If we all chased childhood dreams, I’d still be modeling.”
“Did you stop modeling for George?” She stood up and dusted off her butt.
“No. And Decca’s not not taking the directorship for you. She’s doing what she wants. You need to accept that her love and her desires might just conveniently coincide with your love and your desires.”
“You really think this is what she wants?”
“You still think she pity-married you?” she asked.
“Not pity, exactly. She thought it would grow into love. We both did.”
“Oh, Gus, it was always there. The love you have for each other. Stop lying to yourselves. You’re both so ready to burn down the world for each other, but neither of you need to sacrifice a thing, because what you want is the same. That little house with the big garden, the bonfires out back. Each other.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Gus, it’s been that obvious from the first moment you looked at her.”