Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a Funeral Part 4

I'd had some medical tests done a few weeks before Christmas, and my doctor was calling to tell me that she wasn't happy with the results. Wanted me to see a specialist. Wanted me to see the specialist right away. I stopped her, and told her I couldn't hear this, that I was literally standing in my shoes, about to walk out the door to meet with the funeral director to choose my father's casket and plan his service.

She felt awful - I could hear it in her voice. This doctor and I were close as far as patient-doctor relationships go. I had been under her care for nearly a decade, and she knew me pretty well. She told me she'd have her nurse set up the appointment with the specialist for me, and that she was sorry about my dad. I promised I'd call her after I met with the other doctor, and we'd figure out what to do next.

We hung up, I got myself together, said goodbye to Mayur, and walked down the three flights of stairs to meet my mother, who was waiting outside. I definitely didn't plan to tell her about the call from my doctor. Seeing as how we were going to deal with things related to my father's death, my tears didn't exactly raise any red flags in her mind.

As we traveled the highways and back roads to the tiny town, population around 3,000, where my father would be buried, we talked about him. My mom still truly loved him as a friend, and while she had quite a few bad memories and horrible experiences with him, she was able to focus on the positive ones that day. She'd always done a great job of protecting me from the darkest truths about the man who had made her a mother; I think she loves me so much that no matter what ills he did to her (or even to me) she could look past it and just appreciate the fact that in that space and time they'd been together, I was created, and by some great miracle I inherited only the better parts of him.

We arrived at the funeral home and met a large group of women. I swear, the men in my family just can't stay long in this world. Every single relative there was female. After a few minutes, the funeral director ushered me, along with my father's mother and his widow, into a private room and closed the door.

My main concern was the obituary. I'm a journalist by education and an editor by trade, so I would not stand for a second-rate, error-filled piece about my deceased parent. I guess in the moment I felt like that was at least one thing I could control. To this day, if you Google my full name, that obituary is the first thing that comes up. Crazy.

Choosing the casket was hard. In this way I envy my Hindu family and friends. My mother and I both always told each other if we died we'd want to be cremated, because the idea of being put in a box, sealed up and placed six feet under with dirt piled all around just doesn't sound good or right to us. I find the Hindu death traditions (what little I do know about them) to be quite lovely and more spiritual in most cases than a burial ritual.

Funerals are also expensive. We shared the cost between us - mother, widow, and child. My stepmother wanted this chapter completely closed before the new year, so we agreed to hold the service on December 31, four days later, giving the Medical Examiner sufficient time to do the autopsy and me sufficient time to have medical examinations of my own with the specialist my doctor had selected for me.

The days leading up to the funeral are a bit of a blur now. I saw the specialist, who performed more tests and said he'd call me after the first of the year with the results. I spent a lot of time with Mayur and the neighbors.

The day before the funeral, my mom, stepdad, and I headed back out to my grandmother's house. We held the visitation/viewing - I kept it together fine until two of my coworkers walked in the room. It was the first time I'd really cried in a few days, and as I stood there, both of them holding me as I sobbed (and when I looked at the flowers, and saw that the biggest arrangement sent had been from my office team) I realized again how fortunate I was to work with these people.

I stayed up most of the night writing the eulogy, unable to find the words until then. I scribbled them in pencil, words leaking into the margins of the tiny yellow legal pad that was the only paper I could find in the house.

Late into the night I called Mayur, speaking quietly from one of the open bedrooms in my grandmother's house. (I would learn years later why he liked her place so much - reminded him of his family's homes in India where a sleeping room didn't necessarily mean a room with a locked door.) We'd decided it would be better if he didn't come with me - I didn't want to have to deal with introducing a new boyfriend - and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure how some of my more...well, less open minded relatives were going to handle my interracial relationship. One of my cousins had a baby with a guy from another culture/country during high school, and I remember some not-so-nice comments on that subject. I just didn't want to have to face giving my father's eulogy and defending my personal relationship choices on the same day.