He had that ring on, the thick one with the flat black stone that bore the letters of his fraternity.  I always had liked that ring; there was something impressive about it.  Funny that I should notice his ring right away, before I could see anything else.  Then I saw his arm, bare, and the short sleeve of that white tee-shirt he owned that had a "Coca-cola" emblem on the back.  He was lying on his back, so I could only see the front of the shirt, the word "Coke" in red letters on the left breast.  Sort of odd the different ways manufacturers choose to advertise.  The shirt was tucked into his blue jeans, a brown leather-weave belt helping to hold the shirt in and the pants up.  He had his docksides on, no socks.

I looked at his face, the beard and mustache neatly trimmed, receding hairline combed to perfection.  I marveled at how neat his hair looked:  amazing.  He did not have his glasses on; they were probably still in the car.  His eyes were closed, so peaceful.

"Is this Thomas L. Parkison?"
 
I must have said 'Yes', or nodded an affirmative with my head, or something, but the next thing I remember was the white cover being pulled over him, and I never saw Tom again.

I guess I sat around the house a lot the next couple of days.  My mom said I would be better off staying home from work, so I did.  I did some reading, light reading, and tried to write but found that I could not.  Maybe I watched television.

The viewing is the next thing I remember.  It was a closed casket, and I was thankful for that.  It had been hard enough being the one to identify the body when no one else could be found to do it.  Tom's parents had been out of town; I think his father was in Hilton Head, his mom was away on business, and I was chosen for the grim task.  So the coffin was shut, and I walked up and hugged his mom, clasped hands and embraced his dad, lightly hugged his step-mother, and then I was kneeling in front of the coffin, staring at the shiny black lid and the flowers all around the stand.

"Shit, Tom," my thoughts spoke; I was staring at my reflection in the gloss of the coffin.  "What the hell are you doing in a coffin?  People are going to get the wrong idea, think you're dead or something."  My mind fogged; I stared at the glossy black surface in front of me:  Tom.  "Christ, if I'm not careful I might get all sentimental on you.  Wouldn't want that to happen."  I smiled, tears running down my face.  I did not notice the tears until later, after I had stood up and walked back over to where my mom was standing.

She was so quiet, not knowing what to say I suppose.  Really quiet.  When I had come back from my silent prayer at the coffin, she did not say a word, just handed me a tissue, and so I realized that tears were streaming down my face.  I wiped at the tears, looked at my mom in her black dress, the same one she had worn to my uncle's funeral the year before, and I looked at all the other people from Tom's life who had come to pay their last respects, and I felt an empty feeling.  I felt completely drained, unable to care, to cry, to feel.  Hollow.

People blurred around me.  Suits, dresses, women's legs, receding hairlines, too much lipstick, talking talking talking.

"I'm going outside."

"Are you ok?"

"Yes, I just need some air.  I need to go outside."

She nodded slightly in response to this, and I went to the door, glanced back at the mourners, and stepped out into the fresh spring air.

At the cemetery the next day I could smell the moist dirt that had been shoveled up earlier in the morning.  Moist dirt in the spring has a very distinctive odor, sort of a rejuvenating smell.  The smell of worms and roots and decayed leaves.  I looked at the coffin which had come to mean 'Tom', and I looked at the hole in the ground, and I took a deep breath, that moist dirt smell filling my nose.  I tried to picture men digging a hole in the ground, their leathery brown hands gripping gray handled shovels; shirts off and skin gleaming with sweat in the morning sun.  The dirt piles next to the grave, shovels scooping, dumping, again, again.  They would wipe at their foreheads when the grave was dug, stand back and reflect on their own mortality.

The sun was shining above in the light blue sky.  The grass was just reaching that deep green shade that it usually surrenders by the middle of the summer when the sun becomes too hot.  It was a beautiful day.  I thought about the coffin going into the ground, the sweaty gravediggers covering the coffin with dirt, shovelful after shovelful of earth returning to its home, slowly covering the glossy black.  I pictured myself being buried, peacefully lying in a coffin.  I began to wonder if Tom still had that ring on.  Probably.  His parents would have left it with him, on his hand, right where it belonged.  You can't take it with you.  Maybe you can.  Maybe the Egyptians were right.

I don't know.

Those gravediggers probably used a steam shovel, come to think of it.

© 1997 Stephen M. Daly