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Lord Have Mercy

Janet Kuypers
11/3/14

Looked into the coffin
of a man who was once great,

at least that’s what I hear,
but the cancer ravaged him

until his bones crumbled to dust.
The family then wondered how

the people at the funeral home
could make him look like him,

and as the family walked
into that room, they held their breath

for more reasons than death,
more reasons than their last

viewing of the man they lost, now,
once again with meat on his bones.

When the services started
we all had to follow

the reverend’s laments by all
periodically proclaiming

Lord have mercy.

The man with the collar would talk,
and I would wonder what it would be like

to hold the job of applying make-up
to the dead, to try to make them look

not so dead. Puff the cheeks, apply face paint
to give them color. Lord have mercy.

Beforehand, a string of older firemen
came to us before the coffin,

with small black bands over each
of their badges. “When the fire station

started, before the town even had a
fire station, he used his red truck,

with ladders tacked to the sides,
and a trailer to haul a barrel of water.”

Lord have mercy. The man with
the collar started a hymn;

everyone in this small town
knew the lines and sang along

like little lemmings, and I tried
to remember the lines from

my childhood that I have no reason
to say except when people need

something, anything, to make them
think their life doesn’t have to end.

Lord have mercy. The man with
the collar reminded the room

that people were created for life,
that death was not part of the plan.

But stifle the overwhelming desire
to caress the one you loved,

now in a coffin, for the coldness
would be too stark a reminder.

Lord have mercy. Wanted to try
to look into the coffin from a

different angle; maybe then
the deceased would look more real.

Maybe then I wouldn’t see his lack
of hair from chemo gone wrong,

maybe then I wouldn’t see
his hands clasping rosary beads.

Lord have mercy. I remember
the string of people waiting to meet us

before they proceeded to the coffin
(which reminded me of the procession

of people waiting to congratulate
the bride and groom immediately after

their wedding ceremony),
but in this macabre receiving line

all of the funeral attendants
were repeatedly saying to us,

“I’m sorry for your loss,” and I wonder
how many times the man in the coffin

had to say those words
in his lifetime of service,

how hollow these words were
when he spoke them,

when the words then seemed so stifling,
and I think of how people

say this when nothing can express
how anyone is feeling, especially when

people don’t know how to feel
anymore. Lord have mercy.

#

The chants now ended; the Knights
of Columbus stopped their constant

repeated prayers for the painted man
in the coffin, to help us justify

the pain we don’t know how
to deal with. Lord have mercy,

was all I could think, not to call
a higher power, but to give empty words

at an empty time, with too many
injustices in this living death scene.

We’re all players in this charade,
making up death in a way

that we want to believe is not ghoulish,
that’s what we keep telling ourselves

unless we choose to ignore the macabre
while unsettled lives are still around us.

We mourn, or cry, and we try to fit
this piece into the puzzle of our lives.

And for those who believe,
and even for those who don’t,

these seem the only fitting words
to think, or feel... Lord have mercy.

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