Where's Mike?

I’ve been given the task of identifying bodies of the deceased four times in my life so far. There’s nothing funny about death and corpses, but sometimes in order to protect oneself from too much pain, it’s useful to get analytical about details and grieve over the big picture later. Then later, when you look back at the details, you may find yourself with stories to share. When I was describing one such situation to my hair stylist friend last year, she burst out laughing and said, “Oh my G-d, you have to start writing these down.” The reason you’re reading this blog is her fault and dead people. I won’t write much about the first time except to say that Forest Lawn has far nicer ID rooms than the county morgue. Their sense of setting is impeccable, more like a Sleeping Beauty chamber than a cold storage unit. There may have been serene music softly playing. Also, they have lovely rose gardens for those who wish the cremains to be scattered. (Don’t you just love that efficient new word? Cremains. That’s what I’m going to be some day. A sack of cremains. But I digress.) My mother was next. That was also a tough one. I had to pull the plug on her first. The doctor gave me the odds and left me alone with her unconscious self to decide what to do. I asked her in my mind, “Ma, should I have them schedule surgery?” She answered back inside my head, “Don’t bother. Who needs it?” That was such a Ma thing to say, I acted on her advice and two days later had to return to the hospital to confirm she had the correct toe tag. The confusion came when it was time to decide what to do with her ashes. The counselor at the mortuary told me when her husband eventually died she planned to put his ashes in her pants pocket and slowly let a few grains out at a time at the Santa Anita racetrack. It was his wish: sprinkle him by the grandstand. However, Ma wanted to be buried at sea, near my father. In spite of earlier assurances, once it came time to transport her I found myself paralyzed. My father had died on a cruise to Mexico and was buried at sea three miles off the coast of Acapulco. In my mind, this meant I promised to cart my mother on a cruise ship and surreptitiously slip her overboard in the middle of the night, right next to Daddy. Came the day, and I couldn’t do it. I was unable to book a vacation get-away for the purpose of dumping Ma in Mexico. It was my sister’s daughter who came up with the first solution. She was getting married the following month and was going on a Caribbean cruise for her honeymoon. She offered to stash Ma in one of her suitcases and slip her off the side of the ship when no one was looking. It was an ocean. It counted. I agreed. Then her brother objected. “Grandma has lived all her life next to the Pacific Ocean. It wouldn’t be right to scatter her in the Atlantic. I will scatter her ashes up here.” (He meant the Bay Area.) He even refused the offer of a fifty-fifty split. What to do, what to do? A best friend came to my rescue by telling me I could pay people to scatter ashes at sea. Really? I could arrange for her to lie in peace off San Pedro? Yes, for a fee. So I called the lady who was going to distribute her husband at the racetrack and she took care of it. Would I like to go out in the boat and watch? No, thank you. Just send me a receipt. As it turned out, three miles off San Pedro Harbor was a far more fitting spot because that’s were Ma used to gamble on floating casinos when such things existed. So now, every time I go to the Korean Friendship monument on the hill above San Pedro, I stare out to sea, wave to Ma, and search for the new island about to rise out of the waters, the one made by all the cremains dumped at the same spot, exactly three miles offshore. Then came Lana, my best friend since 7th grade. She had no heirs, no one but her BFF, another BF, local friends, and me. She died at home. We were with her. It was as good as these things can get. Then we waited for the mortuary people to pick her up. That’s when Carol was called upon to do her thing. Apparently, when people from a mortuary roll up with their gurney and wrap up the body, they are reluctant to roll back out again without someone taking a peek and certifying that inside the shroud is the deceased and not a stand-in. I went; I looked; I authorized. That left BFF, BF, and me to spend a long weekend at Lana’s house, trying to locate things and make arrangements. One of the most important things things to find was Mike, Lana’s mother. You see, Lana was ill when Mike died, and somehow never got around to disposing of her mom’s ashes. Toward the end she mentioned mom was still in the house, in a box somewhere. Therefore, we needed to find Mike right away so we wouldn’t accidentally donate her to the Goodwill. I think all we did the first day was uncover buried treasure in the form of jewelry. That sounds like fun, right? You look at the contents of the big jewelry box on the dresser, take each piece out, and tell stories about seeing her wear it. Then you find bigger boxes, cases in drawers, bags in the bathroom, and pretty soon you’re just dumping jewelry on the bed to be sorted later. By the end of the day, they heard my loud, piteous “Oh No!” and came running. They found me sitting on the floor at the back of her closet, slumped over a sack, near tears. “What’s wrong? What happened?” “I found more jewelry.” What we hadn’t found yet was Mike. The next thing we had to do, after a rough night’s sleep, was visit the mortuary. Before making the trek, we discussed our options for where to put Lana. She’d loved our weekends near the seaside town of Cambria, so yes, that’s what we’d do. We’d meet there, stroll out in the waves, and give her a good toss. Then we began to have doubts. What if some little children playing near the water’s edge stepped on a washed-ashore tooth? Another option was called for, but our fatigue and grief-numbed brains couldn’t come up with anything appealing so we decided to postpone a decision until we could think clearly. A plan was also needed for Mike, assuming we found her. If we put them in the same place, Mike would haunt us for eternity. She had issues. No one would rest peacefully if Lana and Mike were within the same city limits. We had a strategy huddle before walking into the mortuary, but after listening to the manager talk about her troubles for the next thirty minutes, we finally made her shut up by signing whatever was necessary for Lana’s BFF to pick her up in a few weeks, giving us time to decide…or not. It was on the last day we three were working together at Lana’s that I decided to tackle the twenty-seven shelves of linens stored in the garage. They were souvenirs of Mike’s life as a high-end householder. Embroidered towels from the 1950s, enough sheets to furnish a hotel, you get the picture. I don’t know what prompted me to crouch down on my knees and reach into the very back of the very last bottom shelf and lift the linens there. Probably divine intervention. I felt something that felt like a box and pulled it out. “Eureka!” I shouted! “I did it!” The others came running again. “What? What did you find?” “I found Mike!” The final decision: Lana had been a member of a lovely church, which had recently created a memory garden for members who had no other place to be. The Choir donated wall plaques. The Minister dressed in his kilt and played the bagpipe. It was going to be the very best, most perfect solution ever. The immediate family gathered next to the brick planter filled with rose bushes. We saw one hole dug next to a bush and assumed there would be a second one in a different planter for Mike, just as the BFF had requested. Then the Minister said his prayers and emptied Mike and Lana into the same cavity before we had time to gasp. We stared at the hole for a few minutes, then shrugged our shoulders and walked off. I guess it was another case of divine intervention. We’d done our best; we could do no more. The truth is, Lana always wanted to be near her mother, and she won. Mike would just have to deal with it.