Curtains by Tom Jokinen

Author:Tom Jokinen [Jokinen, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37415-8
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2010-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

An elderly woman and her two middle-aged sons are seated in the arrangement room. The woman’s husband, father of the two men, died just this morning. They want him buried. The man bought a plot in Brookside in 1954 for $50, so now all they’ll need is $750 to open and close the grave, plus a casket and some kind of service, maybe a small gathering at the graveside. There are grand-kids in Europe. Richard suggests they bury right away, then hold a memorial service later in the summer so the grandkids will have time to get home.

“You don’t want to deny the grandchildren,” he says.

“That’s very true,” says the widow.

“The death certificate,” says the first son. “Do we get that now?”

“No, there’s a backlog, two and a half months.”

“Too many people dying?”

“Passports.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” says the widow.

“Our role in all this,” says Richard, “is going to be the permit for the cemetery, the paperwork, removal from the Health Sciences Centre, and we’ll do the embalming.”

“He loved his shoes,” says the widow. “Put them in with him. He said just the other day, God, I love these shoes.”

The second son reaches out to hold his mother’s hand, and she lets him, but then pulls it away.

“We can talk about flowers for the cemetery,” says Richard.

“Oh, and Pringles chips. He loved Pringles. He ate them all the time with root beer.”

“So the clothing,” says the first son. “Can we bring it tomorrow?”

“And his shoes,” says the widow, “’cause he loved them.”

He loved wood too, and was very particular about finish and grain, which becomes an issue in the casket showroom. The ash “hybrid” cremation casket, suitable for earth burial too, matches the trees on their property. There’s an oak with a deeper grain but it’s a lady’s casket. They like the ash, but if they could get a men’s oak, they might like the oak better. They can’t decide. The son wants a bell to ring at the graveside service. His father loved trains, they had a recording of whistles and train sounds that he and his father would listen to, at top volume, when the mother was out of the house. Mother looks at her son. She’s hearing about this for the first time.

“I can get you a bell,” says Richard.

They settle on the ash with an eggshell interior, based on its grain, which the dead father would’ve admired. The sons want to decorate the casket with racing stripes, like dad did all his cars.

“Can we do that?” the first son asks.

“It’s your casket,” says Richard. “You can do whatever you like.”

The next morning, minutes after Richard unlocks the door, the widow arrives with a bag of clothes, shoes and a can of Pringles chips. Her husband will be buried like a pharaoh, with his most valued earthly possessions.

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