The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch

Author:Thomas Lynch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780393073409
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

That is how she turned it into prayer—the “irregularity,” the cancer, the tumor that moved from her remaining lung up her esophagus, leapt to her spinal cord, and then made for her brain. This was what the doctors said was happening, preferring a discussion of parts failing to persons dying. But for her husband and children what was happening was that her voice was growing more and more quiet, her breath was getting shorter and shorter, her balance was lost to the advance of cancer. My mother was making it work for her, placing the pain and the fear and the grief of it into that account with God she’d kept, by which what was happening to her body became only one of several things that were happening to her. Her body, painful and tumorous, was turning on her and she was dying. I’m sure she was ready to be rid of it. She said her heart. was overwhelmed with grief and excitement. Grief at the going from us—her husband of forty-three years, her sons and daughters, grandchildren born and unborn, her sister and brother, her friends. Excitement at the going “home.” But as the voice inside her body hushed, her soul’s voice seemed to shout out loud, almost to sing. She could see things none of us could see. She refused the morphine and remained lucid and visionary. She spoke words of comfort to each of us—at one point saying we must learn to let go, not only grudgingly, but as an act of praise. I say this not because I understand it but because I witnessed it. I’m not certain that it works—only certain that it worked for her.

Once you’ve made the leap it’s easy. Once you’ve seen huge tracts of greensward put to seemingly conflicting uses, the world becomes a different place. If golf courses can be graveyards, surely football fields, and soccer pitches, ball diamonds and tennis courts. And what about ski slopes? What folks don’t want to be buried on a mountain? Boot Hill we could call it. Listen up, the possible applications are endless. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. Life is like that—death is, too.

My mother’s funeral was a sadness and a celebration. We wept and laughed, thanked God and cursed God, and asked God to make good on the promises our mother’s faith laid claim to in her death. It was Halloween the day we buried her—the eve of All Saints, then All Souls, all suffering souls.

Eddie and I have been looking for acreage. He’s a golfer. I’d rather read and write. He says he’ll be the Club Pro and I can be the Brains Behind the Operation. We’ve worked together for years and years. Our sister Brigid does pre-need and our sister Mary has always done the books—payroll and collections and payables. The women seem to control the money. Revenge they call it for our calling it Lynch & Sons.

Whenever I have business at Holy Sepulchre, I stop in section twenty-four, where my mother and father are buried.

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