The Sunday Memory Drawer - Casketphobia

As much as I loved Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" when I was a kid, the above scene creeps me out to this day. Snow White "stretched out," as my father would say, in a glass casket. A scary prospect to see when you're five years old. I wondered how she could breathe in this thing.
Kids these days are coddled too much with regard to life's nasty twists and turns. Overly protected against the simplest of hardships. But, with regard to children being subjected to the harshness of funerals and all the morbid trappings, I applaud the restraint. And only wish my family had the sense to show some when I was a wee tot.
Inexplicably, I was dragged to a funeral parlor wake at the age of four. The dead guy was a distant relative who had been older than dirt. Nevertheless, I was in tow when we went to see him reposing in that mahogany box. Naturally, I was told that he was "just sleeping." So, boldly, I climbed up and tried to flip open his eyelids. Hello, Mom, Dad. What the hell were you thinking? I didn't know any better. And so you should have, too.
A few short years later, it was back to the same undertaker in very different circumstances. The corpse in residence was much younger and much closer to us all: my father's 45-year-old brother. I was petrified by it all. I refused to go into his house. I was so traumatized that I easily could have been shuttled off to some friend's house for an afternoon of Popeye and the Three Stooges while the mourning was conducted. But, no. I was suited up by my father's cousin, replete with cuff links! All the while, she told me that I needed to go to the wake and the funeral to show my support for the rest of the family. How do you argue that when you're six???
I lingered in the waiting room of the funeral parlor for what was probably an eternity. I was asked repeatedly when I was going to go up and see my uncle. The dead uncle. For Pete's sake, doesn't being in the same building get me off the hook?? No, they all wanted me to go up and kneel and say my respects. And, of course, the eyelid trick was going to be completely retired.
To make this pilgrimage to the casket, I would have to walk a straight line from the door. So, as I would amble up, I would see nothing but the dead uncle "just sleeping." If I closed my eyes during the walk, I would most certainly fall over a folding chair. And, worse, a quickly folding older relative. That would not work.
I hit on a solution with another distant cousin who was about my age. He would walk in front of me all the way up to the casket, blocking my view. As soon as we arrived at our destination, he would step and...ta da. Len is at the casket.
Well, the scheme worked, but the end result was still horrible. In front of me was a young man, only slightly older than my dad. Dead. There were constant sobs behind me. The vision has stayed me for all these years. I even dream about it to this day. And it all effectively swore me off funerals and wakes for life.
Oh, I've been to a few. Both my grandparents. Parents of some friends. When I was a teenager, another uncle died. On the first night of the wake, the power went off in the funeral parlor. My father and I started looking in the backrooms to find the fuse box. I opened one door to find some guy holding a flashlight while a cosmetician combed some dead lady's hair. I ran out of there like I was one of the Little Rascals in a haunted house.
So, if I have to go, I go. But, I'm always in the same place in that funeral parlor. Way in the back. Looking anyway but at the front. And, as a result, I never held any wakes for my own parents. I rationalized by saying they hated them. But, the real reason is...I hate them. And always will. Because I don't need the images of dead Uncle Fritz refreshed in my memory bank.
Hell, it's taken me this long to watch "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" again.
Dinner last night: Grilled cheese with bacon at Athena Diner in Mount Vernon.