I hate open casket funerals. Grandpa looks more alive now than he did before he died. His hands are fastened together on his chest over a smart black suit jacket. They\u2019ve tastefully applied rouge to his cheeks, like the final flush of life. And if you stand still and stare into the casket for long enough, your imagination begins to falsify the imperceptible rise and fall of breath. It would be the first time in years that grandpa was able to breathe without a cannula. My dad places grandpa\u2019s glasses on him; they\u2019re wire-rimmed and were last in fashion in the 70s.<\/p>\n
The funeral home is nice. The casket has an enormous bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers that say, Loving Family. Dad stands vigilant by the antechamber rotely greeting guests. There is a box of tissues in the middle of the front row, perched by itself on a chair between my dad and his three brothers. I wonder if the funeral home put it there, or if my dad was prescient enough to bring it. The funeral home is playing \u201cclassical\u201d instrumental covers of pop music. I think I\u2019m the only person in the room young enough to pick up the melody of \u201cDynamite\u201d by K-Pop group BTS. There are worn, mismatched, squashy, brocade couches lining the rectangular room like a row of teeth. The doors have a seal on them, and every time someone opens the door the vacuum of the seal smacks like a sharp round of applause.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you Brian\u2019s daughter?\u201d A woman in her mid-fifties approaches me. \u201cI\u2019m Tina. I\u2019m a part of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Facebook group your grandpa was in.\u201d She shakes my hand, her hand cool like a river-chilled stone. \u201cPeter was a pillar of the PF community\u2014he was always advocating for us, and was a great friend.\u201d Grandpa had spoken about the Facebook group on occasion, but I had never imagined him a \u201cpillar of the community.\u201d I wonder how many funerals Tina goes to as the head of a terminal illness support group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry for your loss.\u201d Tina bids me goodbye and moves on.<\/p>\n
The men stand at the front of the room around the open casket talking about fixing garage doors and buying propane for backup generators. The women sit at the back. The music is so loud that I can only hear the group I\u2019m next to. I awkwardly haunt both sides, wanting to be near my dad but repelled by the corpse.<\/p>\n
My mom pulls me to sit on one of the camelback couches. After her flight from Thailand two days ago she had told me, \u201cI knew him for 27 years. He was like the father I never had.\u201d<\/p>\n
She whispers in my ear in Thai, \u201cThey do better makeup on corpses here.\u201d \u201cWhat, in America? I didn\u2019t know Thai people did open casket funerals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, on the first day of the three\u2014or five. They show the corpse for the family. You\u2019ve never seen it, have you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but\u2014Thai people, we cremate, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s the weather; people don\u2019t keep as well in the heat. It\u2019s better here in the cold.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have only ever been to one Thai funeral. It was for my great aunt\u2019s husband. I was six and had never met him. I fought my mom about putting on a black dress and made us late. We attended the last day of the funerary rites in an unwalled temple. It was the height of the hot season, and the misting fans feebly circulated the air around the space. Because of our lateness we sat in the back. There were like a hundred people in attendance.<\/p>\n
When the cremation began, I was pulled out from the nominal shade of the temple and into the plaza. I complained a little, feeling sticky and hot in my black dress. The pyre was white and gold, Buddhist funerary colors. The monks carefully stoked the fire. They prayed, a sharp chant like the buzzing motor of a water bus on the Chao Praya River. My great aunt and second cousins stood around the growing flames. I was envious of their white clothes and cloth parasols. The fire grew, starving and wild, charring and eating at the white casket. The stilts that held up the crown of the funerary pyre collapsed in on themselves with an awesome crash. The swooping golden eaves, like the graceful neck of a naga, and the sharp gold spades in the shape of sacred fig leaves tumbled into the burning pile.<\/p>\n
\u201cAi, look away,\u201d my mom whispered to me. But it was too late; the fire consumed. In the flames I could see the outline of the skeletal corpse burning away, releasing his soul from its vessel to be reincarnated.<\/p>\n
Later, my great aunt will receive a tooth that survived the cremation as a gift from the temple.<\/p>\n
This ceremony starts and I\u2019m sitting in the second row, right behind the tissue box. I angle myself so I appear to be facing the casket but use my dad\u2019s head to block the view.<\/p>\n
We asked for the same chaplain who officiated Grandma\u2019s service in 2021. I\u2019m not sure grandpa has been to church in decades. The chaplain is in his 60s, and he\u2019s wearing a clergy collar and a white stole. He holds a small leather-bound Bible in his right hand; candy-colored Post-it notes stick out of it like rainbow tassels. I wonder how many funerals he does a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Jesus Christ told us that in his Father\u2019s house there are many mansions. Jesus is preparing a place for Peter, an eternal house, not built by human hands.\u201d I don\u2019t remember Jesus being mentioned this often in Grandma\u2019s ceremony. \u201cAnd when you look to the world and see Peter in the breeze or in the morning air\u2014\u201d For a moment I think there will be relief from all the Jesus talk. \u201c\u2014know that he is already with Jesus and Joyce in the city that is to come. For he has returned, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stand outside the funeral home waiting for the procession to begin. The funeral home is a large, colonial, Pennsylvanian stone house and sits not two hundred feet from the Delaware River. There are so many stone buildings in PA. I wonder why; I bet grandpa would\u2019ve known. Mom comes to stand by me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour dad went all out\u2014I didn\u2019t know you could hire bagpipers for funerals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHmm, it\u2019s how my great-grandparents met\u2014I think\u2014great-grandma was a highland sword dancer; she took bagpiping lessons from great-grandpa.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stand by the car and stare across the river at New Jersey, and it starts to rain in an appropriately funerary manner.<\/p>\n
I visited grandpa two days before he passed. The first night in Pennsylvania I was afflicted with this awful headache. I foraged the house, searching for pain relief meds when I saw them. It\u2019s been years since she passed, but there they were, two pairs of small, pink orthopedic sneakers, a cut of spring tulips left on the bottom shelf of the mud room. They must\u2019ve been moved because they weren\u2019t by the front door; maybe it would have been ghoulish to keep them there. Maybe one of us would have thrown them out. I wonder if grandpa moved them, unwilling to see them every day but unwilling to throw them away. I moved away from the stinging scene in the mud room, searching for relief.<\/p>\n
In my grandfather\u2019s house there are many rooms, rooms that hold TVs that no longer work, extra mattresses that create lean-tos in the living room. In his driveway there is a red Ford Probe, sun bleached and flat-tired, that he swore he\u2019d fix one day. There is a side table that contains 120 Celtic and bagpiping records, but no record player. There is a chest of drawers filled with plastic bags, and there are bins filled with birthday cards. Under his bed there is a wooden board screwed into the box springs. I open a hallway closet, and there are storage boxes labeled \u201cmakeup\u201d and \u201cbaking\u201d and others with lacy, easter-colored socks. My headache deepens. I was just trying to find some meds.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood afternoon and welcome to the Washington Crossing National Cemetery. At this time military honors will be rendered. There will be a three-volley salute. Please prepare yourselves for loud rifle fire.\u201d The man speaking is in his thirties, has a military cut, and is wearing slacks with no socks. We\u2019re seated on wrought-iron benches in a gazebo. I look behind us at the cemetery; each tombstone is perfectly equidistant from the next like an orchard of marble thumbs that peek out from the earth, and they cover the two hundred acres of hills like halftone print. The wind picks up, the rain bearing down. Grandpa\u2019s casket\u2014now thankfully closed\u2014is draped in a heavy American flag. It\u2019s been moved against the only wall in the structure. The wall is made of the limestone, with circular gold plaques of each branch of the military lined up above him.<\/p>\n
Fifty feet to my left three sailors in dress whites hold rifles. On a signal, they aim at the sky and fire, aim and fire, and fire. Gunfire is simultaneously much louder and much more disappointing than I imagined.<\/p>\n
Two of the sailors fold the flag lengthwise, stripes over stars, and then lengthwise, stars visible, and then in triangles, and triangles, again, and again. Their white gloves whisper against the thick cotton of the flag, until all that\u2019s left is a tricorn of stars. \u201cOn behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this\u2014\u201d One of the sailors kneels in front of my dad, a proposal of spent cartridges and Ol\u2019 Glory \u201c\u2014a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one\u2019s honorable and faithful service.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bagpiper begins to play. He stands ten feet closer to us than the riflemen; he\u2019s wearing highland dress. I twist my hands in the spaces between the cold metal of the bench as the opening notes of \u201cAuld Lang Syne\u201d play, and I remember Thanksgiving dinners at the Pennsylvania house, the dining table dressed up in a white tablecloth stained with decades of Thanksgivings. \u201cWe will say the Selkirk Grace,\u201d Grandpa would say, \u201cas written by the Poet Laureate of Scotland, Robert Burns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some hae meat and canna eat, <\/em> I have air but cannot breathe. A cool wind cuts through the gazebo.<\/p>\n For auld lang syne. <\/em> My hair paddles in the burn of my tears. My mouth is salty. The sharp, buzzing chant of the pipes close out.<\/p>\n And we\u2019ll tak a cup o\u2019 kindness yet, <\/em> \u201cIt was a good service,\u201d Dad says. He looks to me. \u201cIt was good.\u201d<\/p>\n My face is tacky and cold where my tears have dried. \u201cDo you want me to do something like that for you? A military funeral?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, no way. You should plant me under a tree or something. I hate open casket funerals.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the bagpipes?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, do the bagpipes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hate open casket funerals. Grandpa looks more alive now than he did before he died. His hands are fastened together on his chest over a smart black suit jacket. They\u2019ve tastefully applied rouge to his cheeks, like the final flush of life. And if you stand still and stare into the casket for long … Continue reading A Funeral<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6855],"tags":[],"issue":[6876],"class_list":["post-2299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction","issue-6876"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 08:35:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2299"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=2299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnd some wad eat that want it, <\/em>
\nBut we hae meat and we can eat, <\/em>
\nSae let the Lord be Thankit! <\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe twa hae paidl\u2019d in the burn, <\/em>
\nFrae morning sun till dine; <\/em>
\nBut seas between us braid hae roar\u2019d <\/em>
\nSin\u2019 auld lang syne. <\/em><\/p>\n
\nFor auld lang syne. <\/em><\/p>\n