Friend of the family, a neighbor, was in his forties, had smoked for years. He'd had some health problems that had just gotten resolved, and he was happier than I'd ever seen him for one beautiful summer. He'd been down at my place admiring my raspberry bushes, and telling me about his grandmother's raspberry patch, and I told him he could have some plants. He'd started clearing to get a place to start his own bed when he got a cough that wouldn't go away, and then got pnumonia, and was diagnosed with small cell carcinoma. He stopped working on the raspberry beds then.
He lived about fourteen months, outlived his projected death by about eight months. One day he turned up at my door looking sharp. It was a pretty autumn day like today, birch and aspen leaves were yellow, sky electric blue. He said with kind of a self-conscious laugh that he'd told his brother that if he wanted to take a picture of him, he'd better do it soon. I asked how his brother had responded, and he said he laughed. I went and got the camera. Pictures were amazing, and he started losing his hair and weight soon after, so it turns out he was right about the timing.
He died like he lived, independent as possible, stayed at home in his little dry cabin, with a health care provider who came out and administered drugs for him. . I told my husband he might want to build the coffin, and that it was time to get started if he did. I'd married a back-East city boy, and he thought that was kinda weird, but then he asked me to look up coffin designs on the internet. You can find just about anything on the internet. He started working on the coffin in the front yard, wearing shorts and a tool belt, and it sat on sawhorses until it was done. I went to the lumber store to buy the wood, and when she heard what I was asking for, the woman who worked there told me she had cheaper plywood with a question in her eyes. I told her I wanted the good stuff, and she quietly asked if it was for a coffin and I said yes, and she said she gave a discount for that. His sister made the lining for the coffin out of a patchwork of faded old blue jeans, and put a pocket from one of the jeans in the wall of the coffin so people could tuck notes in there for him. Another sister came up from back East with her daughter, and she helped sand the coffin. They would work for awhile, and then the reality of the task they were doing hit them, and they'd stop, and cry, and go back to work after awhile.
Our friend kept asking how the coffin was coming, and seemed relieved or pleased, if that's the word, to hear that it was done. After the coffin was finished, his sister-in-law said she didn't want it in her house, because "it creeped her out". So we stood it in a corner of our living room because it was starting to rain. I was a bit uncomfortable with it, too, so that night after everyone had gone to bed, I walked over to where it stood, and tried it out. I stood in it, and thought about what it was for, and after that, it was okay. A few days later, we had a Fed-Ex delivery, and the driver kept glancing over at the corner, and finally worked up the nerve to ask, "Uh . . . is that what it looks like?"
The quilt was made out of pictures reproduced of his life, including the one I took that autumn day when he still had hair. When it was finished, it was hung over his bed where he could see it. We left one panel blank. I planned on that as a wrap to bury him in, but in the end, his mother wanted to keep it, and so she did. The night he died, his brother and sister-in-law had a gathering at his house, and we wrote goodbyes in the blank panel of the quilt. By the time he died, he only weighed about 80 pounds, and my husband and our friend's brother washed him and dressed him in a sweatshirt and sweatpants. It was a struggle, because rigor mortis had set in by the time that they did that. They put him in his coffin on sawhorses in his garage for the farewell, and his grave was dug with a backhoe on his brother's property. They left his coffin in the garage until the next day, but that evening, my son told me that he wanted to say goodbye to this man who had been a special friend to him. I walked over there with my son, just the two of us, and opened the coffin, and picked my son up so he could see.
What remained didn't look like our friend anymore. It looked like one of those dolls that they make by carving an apple and letting it dry. I'd been afraid that when I opened it, there would be a whiff of decay, and I didn't want my son to have to experience that. But instead, when I opened the coffin, I smelled the unmistakable scent of raspberries. My son said goodbye, and I put the lid back on the coffin, and we walked home.
He lived about fourteen months, outlived his projected death by about eight months. One day he turned up at my door looking sharp. It was a pretty autumn day like today, birch and aspen leaves were yellow, sky electric blue. He said with kind of a self-conscious laugh that he'd told his brother that if he wanted to take a picture of him, he'd better do it soon. I asked how his brother had responded, and he said he laughed. I went and got the camera. Pictures were amazing, and he started losing his hair and weight soon after, so it turns out he was right about the timing.
He died like he lived, independent as possible, stayed at home in his little dry cabin, with a health care provider who came out and administered drugs for him. . I told my husband he might want to build the coffin, and that it was time to get started if he did. I'd married a back-East city boy, and he thought that was kinda weird, but then he asked me to look up coffin designs on the internet. You can find just about anything on the internet. He started working on the coffin in the front yard, wearing shorts and a tool belt, and it sat on sawhorses until it was done. I went to the lumber store to buy the wood, and when she heard what I was asking for, the woman who worked there told me she had cheaper plywood with a question in her eyes. I told her I wanted the good stuff, and she quietly asked if it was for a coffin and I said yes, and she said she gave a discount for that. His sister made the lining for the coffin out of a patchwork of faded old blue jeans, and put a pocket from one of the jeans in the wall of the coffin so people could tuck notes in there for him. Another sister came up from back East with her daughter, and she helped sand the coffin. They would work for awhile, and then the reality of the task they were doing hit them, and they'd stop, and cry, and go back to work after awhile.
Our friend kept asking how the coffin was coming, and seemed relieved or pleased, if that's the word, to hear that it was done. After the coffin was finished, his sister-in-law said she didn't want it in her house, because "it creeped her out". So we stood it in a corner of our living room because it was starting to rain. I was a bit uncomfortable with it, too, so that night after everyone had gone to bed, I walked over to where it stood, and tried it out. I stood in it, and thought about what it was for, and after that, it was okay. A few days later, we had a Fed-Ex delivery, and the driver kept glancing over at the corner, and finally worked up the nerve to ask, "Uh . . . is that what it looks like?"
The quilt was made out of pictures reproduced of his life, including the one I took that autumn day when he still had hair. When it was finished, it was hung over his bed where he could see it. We left one panel blank. I planned on that as a wrap to bury him in, but in the end, his mother wanted to keep it, and so she did. The night he died, his brother and sister-in-law had a gathering at his house, and we wrote goodbyes in the blank panel of the quilt. By the time he died, he only weighed about 80 pounds, and my husband and our friend's brother washed him and dressed him in a sweatshirt and sweatpants. It was a struggle, because rigor mortis had set in by the time that they did that. They put him in his coffin on sawhorses in his garage for the farewell, and his grave was dug with a backhoe on his brother's property. They left his coffin in the garage until the next day, but that evening, my son told me that he wanted to say goodbye to this man who had been a special friend to him. I walked over there with my son, just the two of us, and opened the coffin, and picked my son up so he could see.
What remained didn't look like our friend anymore. It looked like one of those dolls that they make by carving an apple and letting it dry. I'd been afraid that when I opened it, there would be a whiff of decay, and I didn't want my son to have to experience that. But instead, when I opened the coffin, I smelled the unmistakable scent of raspberries. My son said goodbye, and I put the lid back on the coffin, and we walked home.
