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Three Appointments

David Sapp

    Though I failed to comprehend, there were three opportunities, appointments really, to see my father at the end. At his hospital bed, surrounded on all sides by his graying siblings, their overwhelming accumulation of years with my father greater than mine was a claustrophobia. (My sisters were pointedly absent.) He stubbornly refused to die, making the nurses laugh, closing another sale, until he couldn’t, his humor and all outward appearances camouflaging the cancer and emphysema filling his skin like wheat poured into a burlap sack. Their laughs were genuine, not those sad, piteous little titters, a last generosity for most brittle old men.
    The Hospice volunteer who I’d known for years, set out chocolate chip cookies that no one ate, as if a bite would be as potent as a communion wafer, a confirmation of the inevitable, a last rite. She said, “The toes begin to curl. And there are other signs.” But she didn’t elaborate. “You know, they all choose when to go.” I found this overly simplistic, but she said this as if she were his secretary informing me of his availability, a kindness for the boss’s son. I went home. The next day, I heard of his death over the phone.
    As I drove to the funeral home, the stern, imposing brick mansion at the corner of Newark and Granville roads, near Beck’s Point Drive-In Mr. Pizza and the Sunoco, I was aware that my father lounged, cooling in the basement. In an upstairs office, I negotiated the price of his demise: cremation or embalming, coffin, and crypt. I thought of marble sarcophagi lining the naves of early Christian basilicas in Ravenna and Rome. There were plenty of slick, colorful samples and brochures. The mortician was a pleasant man with a true and empathetic expression though a little too doughy around the edges. How’s his health? (There were rumors that the previous undertaker was a necrophiliac. Was he partial to men or women? This briefly crossed my mind.)
    The man asked if I wanted to see my father. My pause was not too long and not too thoughtful before I replied, “No, thank you. I just spoke with him yesterday.” I was not there to claim my father, to verify the facts of his death. I was quite willing to take this man’s word for it. Besides, despite my father’s new repose, he remained in my mind, busy, busy, busy. But I was more naïve and trusting then. Would I reply in the same way today? Would I need to give him a poke? If this could happen to my immortal and indestructible father, it could happen to me. I was required to come to terms with my father’s death. But I thought, “The only closure in life is death, and that’s debatable.” I was advised that if I didn’t touch my father’s shell, there’d be no closure. I’ve seen it. Some go so far as to melodramatically kiss their loved one, bang, smack on the lips. Music is essential, the score of a mob film.
    Finally, at the church and cemetery, our schedules seemed to serendipitously coincide. Saint Luke’s was the place of his baptism, and our Catholic ancestors built this parish in the early nineteenth century after their migration from England and Maryland. Surely, he could squeeze me in. At the mass, I got to see him or rather his framed portrait. (“Our Father who art in heaven.”) I suppose I expected his rolodex, phone and fake Rolex at the altar as well, a veneration of relics. His ashes, his gray grit, was covered by a clean, white cloth richly embroidered with Christian symbols. There was no urn. We left him in the plastic container from the crematorium, his name tag and bar code identification still attached as if we would pass him through a discount store check-out scanner. Beep. I always wondered how thoroughly they swept him up from the oven. I imagined there were a few flakes of Dad mixed in with other, previous customers.
    At Saint Luke’s Cemetery, just outside of town, at the grave, the ugly hole in the ground, family standing around, I removed the rotted plywood covering and set Dad’s box inside. When the priest flung holy water at the gathering, there was a shift in me. My mind wandered. My attention and interest in our appointment waned. Suddenly, the daffodils planted here and there among the headstones and thriving in the spring sunlight, were extraordinary. Dogwood bloomed at the edge of the woods. A wren scolded us. I gazed at the steep, green Ohio hills and how the pastures turned a blue sfumato gray in the distance, easily the scene of a Renaissance landscape, a view from Assisi, Vinci or Florence.

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