Sweet, Little Old Widow Lady

On the agenda for today was ordering the stone for my husband’s grave. Or I should say our grave stone since eventually both our cremated remains will reside in the same place. That was a surreal experience, walking into the monument company and seeing all those beautiful tombstones in their display room. For several years my husband had wanted to order a stone and I’d been the one dragging my feet. There’s something special he wanted to make sure got etched in marble for all of eternity but I was a little creeped out by the idea of seeing my own name on a grave. But “Some day” finally got here, and the job couldn’t be put off any longer. What my husband wanted and will get is a line from a Roy Rogers and Dale Evans song: “Happy trails to you --- until we meet again.” Yup, he was a bit sentimental about some things.

After the salesman wrote that line down and assured me there would be no problem using the copyrighted lyrics, he asked for my husband’s birth and death dates. I told him. Then he says, “And what dates should be use for you?”

From out of no where I snapped back: “If we knew that, I don’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you.”

People in the ‘death and dying’ business are so serious and somber and ever so worried about offending someone whose emotions are close to the surface. The look on his face was priceless until he noticed that I was smiling and then he cracked one, too.

“Let me rephrase that,” he said, “when were you born?”

Talk about being serious, somber and afraid of offending a client, the woman at the funeral home had put the wrong picture on the remembrance card and when I pointed that out she looked so stricken that I glanced down at her feet, half expecting to see pee running down her leg and filling up her shoe. I don’t remember ever having that kind of power over another person and it was fascinating. I suppose it had something to do with me raising my voice just a tiny tad when I told her that she, herself, had confirmed that I had e-mailed two photos---one for the obituary and one for the card. Fortunately, in time of the service, she came through with a corrected version of the card and as a reward I didn’t even yell at her when the video they taped of the service crashed half way through. After all, I had to start somewhere practicing to be a sweet, little old widow lady. ©