Barney’s Last Smoke

There are a lot of humble diners scattered across the country, but the one I was seated in with my sisters had the wisdom to offer fried bologna as a side order to your eggs. I am the youngest of the three of us, which no longer matters since being the baby of the family gets you squat when you’re over 40. Marlena’s birthday is the same week as mine with a five-year difference, and Robin is in the middle of us, meaning that at one point in time we were 13, 16, and 18 years of age, sharing a small bathroom and one set of hot rollers in the ’70s when Farrah Fawcett hair was mandatory. On your average Friday night, Braveheart had nothing on us in terms of battle scenes.

With us are John, Marlena’s husband, and Craig, whom Robin introduces at social occasions as her spousal equivalent. My husband Buz is not with us. He is on a once in a lifetime trip to the wilds of Alaska, where several airlines and Satan himself conspired to make his journey a 35-hour one way trip. Judging from the looks around the table, Buz may have gotten the best of the deal. We are killing time till the director of the funeral parlor down the street arrives to meet with us, because our father has died. Today is urn shopping day.

Now, I come from a family of shoppers. There is some sort of adrenal charge that we get at the point of purchase of literally anything. Shopping buzzes are like alcohol buzzes. Jones of New York is Sonoma Cutrer chardonnay, and The Dollar Tree is boxed wine, but both will get you drunk. We have lost many a day deep within the bowels of a Walmart. Today’s chore of visiting the funeral home at times seemed too much for Marlena, but Robin and I kept slipping the words “pick out” and “buy” into the conversation, till she decided that nothing was going down without her weighing in on the matter.

Behind us on the wall, the black plastic cat clock with the pendulum tail told us that we had 55 minutes before our appointment, so the five of us got refills on our drinks and took turns going to the bathroom. The anticipation prompted us one by one to say bizarre things like “So… think it’s really gonna be Dad’s ashes, or do they just sweep up everyone’s ashes and dole them out? Dad smoked Salems for 40 years, shouldn’t his smell sort of mentholated? How can anyone tell?”

Through the kindness of a friend, we had almost avoided the whole urn shopping deal completely. I have a dear chum whose family owns a jewelry store, and I remembered her telling me that—at the sudden passing of another friend with children-—she had provided urns for the kids to each have some of their father’s ashes. In my grief, I vaguely remembered some beautiful stories about places that this guy’s ashes had been sprinkled: favorite beach bars, on the floor of his college team’s basketball court, etc. The fact that she said that she would hand deliver them to me that night, so I could take them with me on my drive home the next morning made the gesture all the more a godsend. I called my sisters and magnanimously made the offer to them as if it were my own. “Don’t worry about it a second longer,” I said. “The whole urn issue is handled. I am bringing home one for each of us.” I nearly glowed with my own forethought and generosity.

Imagine my surprise when the containers were unveiled in my kitchen, and they were all of an inch tall. I had imagined urns that would anchor elaborate displays on a mantel. These were travel size. They were smaller than the individual condiments on a room service tray. I was bringing home Pocket Dad.

We left the solace of the diner, and soon found ourselves in the lobby of the faded yet comfortable funeral home talking to the faded yet uncomfortable director. Marlena’s Ritalin had hit her bloodstream right as we arrived, and the man wasn’t sure what to make of her very animated story about the phallic shaped water tower back home in Ypsilanti. “Really!” she kept saying, “It’s huge! Look it up online!”

He ushered us to a separate room where urns of all manner were displayed. You would flat out not believe the variety. There was everything from a small wooden box that seemed to dully state “I hated this person,” to a giant jewel encrusted vessel that resembled some sort of resplendent bong. It had its own spotlight.

My sisters and I looked at each other. “Well,” I stated quietly, “I want you both to know that when this time comes for me, I want the biggest bitch in here, and I want it to have a flat top so that people will have a place to set their drinks while they tell amazing stories about me.” Robin decided she wanted one that could be bolted to their TV so that Craig would see her every day. Marlena then got practical and asked how large a container she would need to hold a third of a father. I reminded her that we all had Pocket Dads, so she had the math wrong.

Being split into six different containers would have thrilled Dad, because he truly loved anything that came in bulk. With Dad, more was always better. Once when Arby’s was running their Five For Five promotion, Dad went to the counter and tried to order 100. He had to talk to the manager who told him to come back the next day, at which time he proudly stuffed his freezer full of roast beef sandwiches. God knows how much horsey sauce he walked out of there with.

He once bought a crate of tube socks so large that he had to empty it out in order to fit them all in his car so he could drive them back from Florida. Oddly enough, this wealth of fresh socks did not prompt Dad to change his own more often. His foot odor was legendary. Once, years ago, my father kicked his shoes off and my then new husband got up, slid the glass doors open, and repositioned himself so he could breathe through the screen for the remainder of the movie. Didn’t bother Dad at all.

The funeral director explained that the urns would have to be special ordered but assured us that we could get a loaner for the memorial. That put us up to 7 containers; 3 actual urns, 3 pocket dads, and now one stunt urn for the service. I asked where it would be sitting the next day at the memorial, and he produced something that looked like a plant stand. As cold and impersonal as that felt, we just didn’t feel like we had a lot of room for creativity. We did briefly consider pulling the urn in on an antique toy car since Dad loved classic automobiles, or placing the urn in a wingback chair like Dad was attending the gathering with everyone else, but you’ll be happy to know we did neither. Mom would have killed us.

My father and mother divorced when I was 19, but they still continued to live a few blocks from each other. The fact that my Mother remarried and refused to speak to Dad for months on end meant nothing to Dad. He called the atmosphere between them “right frosty” and took unmitigated delight at annoying her whenever their paths crossed. He would laugh and quote the country song to us that says “She loves me but she don’t like me anymore,” to which Marlena finally replied, “Well Dad—you’re half right.”

The next day at the actual memorial, I looked over the crowd at the faces looking back at me. For a split second I could see it all. I saw the teenagers in their tailored dark clothes, and they looked like little attorneys and media buyers and real estate agents. I looked at the senior faces, many of whom I’d never laid eyes on, and I could see them as young parents, just making it up as they went along, trying to give their kids one better than they’d had. I saw all the stages of being, and they were crazy beautiful.

Dad and I faced the group: me at the podium, him on the plant stand, and it hit me. I am an adult. I had moved up a place in line, and there was no turning back. My focus was pulled back into the room, and I smiled at my sisters, making a mental note to borrow the righteous black pumps my Mom had worn. I began to speak, realizing that my words didn’t matter. It’s the words that are spoken before you’re split into seven urns that count.