One of the last pieces of life’s puzzle is a prepaid funeral arrangement. If we had any sense we would be shopping for ourselves but we were helping my parents choose between two nearby places that we chose from a list that came from a friend of my father’s. One was moderately priced and one was considerably cheaper.
My parents have chosen a green burial with a shroud and no embalmment, a “direct burial” in funeral home jargon, basically pick up, preparation and delivery to the cemetery, but one place was about twice the cost of the other. So we read a lot into the transaction in these short meetings.
Both salesmen were late. We were late for both appointments as well but the salesmen were later. I don’t hold that against them. One was slick and well spoken. One was a kid who my father said looked like he just washed his hands and sat down. The slicker one slipped when he said they would probably just wrap the bodies in a sheet unless we provided our own shrowd. And the kid didn’t do himself any favors when he got off on a logistical tangent about how they dig graves when you’re buried next to someone else. “They dig slowly with the back hoe and if they hit the top of a casket they move over a bit.” I’m sure we were all picturing a shovel going through whichever corpse went in the ground first.
I’d go with the kid but my dad will call the shots. After the meetings we headed down to to Nick’s where my mother, Peggi and I all ordered the “Italian Special.”
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