Interment

I was just going through my "drafts" folder on Blogger, and found this old gem.  It never quite made its way to being posted.  Better late than never.



We knew there'd be ups and downs, working at a mortuary.  The moment the idea came up, we thought, "cool!" . . . the next moment, "really?".  "Why not?" . . . and "Why should we?".  We took it. 

Fast forward to this morning at 5:30, phone rings.  Again at, I don't know, maybe 7:00.  Again at 9:00-- I take the call, you are still out.  You barely get back in time for church, or so we think.  The phone rings again.  That call shouldn't take long, only there's been some confusion, so we miss half of the primary program we'd so been looking forward to.

Church is over, but because there is a viewing in the mortuary, we have to cut our usual Sunday Afternoon snack-time routine short, and you head over there.  Fast forward an hour or so and I am on the couch, eating a tub of pre-prepared cookie dough, and watching Sabrina, the one with Audrey Hepburn in it.  We both love Audrey dearly, but agree that the newer version is better film-making overall.  What difference?  You're not there anyway. 

Time trips on.  You call toward the end of my second Hepburn film to say that you have to drive down to Salt Lake after everyone leaves the viewing.  You've not eaten in many hours, and ask me to bring you something.  So I trudge out into the rain, toting a sandwhich in a honey-smudged plastic baggie.  It was the best I could do, I reason.  You're just grateful for something other than a bowl of mints to snack on.

On the desk in the office is a clipped-out article about the rush on Hostess products as soon as the bankrupcy and bakery shut-down was announced.  You sit across from me, wearing an ill-fitting suit, and eating the sandwhich.

"We'll have to tell our kids one day. . . about Twinkies."

You laugh.  You think I'm joking.

"I mean it.  I don't know why, but we'll have to tell them."  It will have to mean something, I finish saying in my mind. 

"Twinkies.  They've just always been there.  Ubiquitious, gratuitous, there in our lunch boxes.  Well, I never had a lunch box, and therefore, never had a Twinkie in one.  But had I had a lunchbox, I'm sure there'd have been a Twinkie."

You're still eating your sandwhich.

"And we should have bought Wonder  bread while we had the chance.  Stone-Ground Hazlenut?!  What were we thinking?!"  I'm staring now at your sanwhich.  I think you're agreeing. 

It was that Modernism.  The belief in the man-made.  Had they made an organic Twinkie, they probably could have survived.  But people are losing faith in the man-made.  Call it post-modernism, call it a swinging pendullum, call it common-sense, I don't care.  There's been a death in the human family, and I can't let it go.  I know I should have bought a box while I had the chance, and now they're going for $100.00 on Ebay, or so reads the paper. 

I don't have 100 CENTS to put toward it.  I set the paper down. 

You've since walked out to help the family start to clean up, it is past 8:00 and you're anxious to go down to Salt Lake so that you can get back at a decent hour. 

I sit and stare, stare at that paper and the recently published obituary and a death certificate.  This woman had not been old.  Out in the hallway, another group of women are huddling together.  They're crying, mourning a loss.  A loss I can't begin to understand.

I'm thinking about the Twinkies.  I think I can understand that.

I think.