This was not like a regular viewing, which usually involves a lovely casket and music and an inviting setting, with the deceased person properly attired, etc.. Our viewing was really just an identification session. We were in a small room off to the side. Along the wall were various kinds of boxes you could purchase in which to keep the ashes.
The person with whom I had made the arrangements was not there on Monday, so we were dealing with a different person. They were not quite ready for us. It was almost as if they were not expecting us. We waited until they had him ready.
The Cremation Services office, or business was just one of a number of businesses along a mini-mall. It did not look like any funeral home I had ever seen. I did ask what we should expect to see, and the employee indicated that he would just be on a gurney, and he would be covered with a sheet, except for the head. Not having seen him for so long, I would never have recognized him in a million years. The four of us gingerly entered the room, in that quiet uncertain way one acts when in the presence of death.
On the way there, the girls asked me if I was going to say anything, and I agreed that I could say a few brief words and a prayer.
We did slowly and uncertainly draw nearer. After I took my first look, I moved down toward the feet and Michelle moved in closer to the head. My foot accidentally bumped into the wheel of the gurney below and made it move unexpectedly. Michelle jumped out of her skin and squealed in shock and surprise. Then, we all inappropriately burst out laughing, because that was so unexpected, and funny.
I did thank him for some good times, and for helping create the family that means so much to me. We all said the Lord's prayer together. They appreciated my words, and there were tears.
After the viewing, we all agreed that we should have the ashes sent to the funeral home in Newark Valley, because we would have a memorial service there.
At first, we could not figure out what we should do with the ashes. The only one of us who actually wanted to keep them was Michelle. Somehow, the whole process for her was a healing, a closure, the filling in of an empty hole. Clearly, she had been the one most affected by his abandonment. Finding him, having him back in her life, meant so much to her.
I was asked by a couple of friend how I felt. Honestly, I did not feel very much emotionally. In any crisis, I go into the task-mode of figuring out what needs to be done, and making a plan, and carrying out the plan. I supposed my many years dealing with death as a pastor also played into my lack of emotion.
Whatever I had needed to work out emotionally, was work that had been done long ago. Largely, I had left all of that behind. I have been very happily married for a long time now. Other than occasionally wondering what happened to Ron, and wondering if we would ever know the answer to that, I did not think of him very much at all.
I would never in a million years have imagined that we would be the ones to take care of him in his death.
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