Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani

Author:Christa Parravani [Parravani, Christa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

I chose flowers and prayer cards, a casket, the method of internment. I sent word of Cara’s death to those who loved her. Mom said I should do the planning. I was the only one, she’d said, who’d know what Cara would have wanted.

“How would you want your funeral?” Mom asked. I was the next best thing to having Cara there to do it herself. So I planned my funeral during the second week of June in 2006, a hot and humid seven days when spring gave way to summer.

I went to three flower shops to look for a casket topper: I wanted daisies. The daisies, I argued to the flower shopgirl, must not just top the casket, they must look wild on it, as if they were growing on the lid of the box where Cara lay. I’d bought the Trappist premier Premium casket in a cherry stain. The Trappist is handcrafted out of hardwood and has mitered joints and raised panels on mortised stiles and rails. The Trappist came with a hinged lid and an optional keepsake cross. The daisies on that casket would have to be chaotic and spill over peat moss or something green that might have grown in a fairy tale.

“This isn’t just any casket topper.” I leaned in over the florist shop’s counter, within breathing space of the shopgirl’s register. Her brown hair was tied back in a severe ponytail; the braces on her teeth were looped with neon green rubber bands. “This is for my sister, my identical twin sister.” I was nearly out of breath. “And I don’t want any plastic ribbons.”

“We don’t have daisies in right now.” The girl absently counted change. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” she continued, “but what is peat?”

I turned my back on the girl and opened my funeral-planning guide. “There is another store down the street,” I said. “If you can’t help me, I’ll take my business there.”

“I can manage daises, I guess,” she conceded. “Let me ask my manager.” The shopgirl picked up the phone and spoke softly into the receiver. “He’ll do it,” she told me, and pulled out an invoice pad from beneath the counter and started scribbling. “We’ve got peat moss but we’ll have to order daisies. You’ll have to pay extra; they aren’t in season.”

After the casket and the topper, outfits were next. I dressed my sister and then I dressed myself.

For her funeral Cara wore the dress I’d asked her to wear to my wedding: the black chiffon dress with the three underlayers of crepe that had swished about as she walked. She’d worn open-toed jeweled sandals to the wedding. We’d bought the shoes together at an Albany shopping mall. The price was high but I’d pushed them her way, urged her to try them on, and then bought them for her, an early birthday gift. I’d looked through her closet for the sandals to give the funeral director, sifting through pairs and pairs of shoes, and couldn’t find them.

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