by Melanie McGehee

I arrived at my parents’ home a couple of hours after I got the phone call that Dad had passed. She had already planned our day. The meeting with the funeral home was scheduled for 11:00. “We need to get your dad’s suit ready,” Mom said. “Get it for me.”

I didn’t have to ask which one. “You can bury me in this,” Dad had told me the day we bought it, a soft gray with subtle pinstripes. Mom had insisted that we also get him a “fresh” white button-down. As I entered his walk-in closet, the day of his death, I thought back to that word. Fresh. I thought how Mom had not said new, but fresh. At the store, Dad had been adamant that I also choose the tie. That morning, some nine years later, I saw them still all grouped together in his closet, the pants and the jacket on one hanger and the fresh white shirt with the tie draped around it on a hanger beside them. Dad would be buried in the same ensemble that he’d worn to my wedding.

We went to Custom Cleaners on St. John Street before we went to the funeral home to make the arrangements for dad’s viewing and service. I didn’t ask why. I did not say, “Mom, do you think that’s necessary?” I did not try to assure her that the suit was clean enough. She wanted his burial clothes perfect, and only she knew what that required. It was not the cheapest in town, but Custom Cleaners had always been Mom’s choice. They’d cared for my wedding dress, my prom dress, my childhood Easter and Christmas dresses. Even our Sunday coats were stored off-season at Custom.

Mom followed me into the shop, but I was the one who had the suit in hand. I gave the pants and jacket to the lady behind the counter, and she scratched out some words that I couldn’t decipher on a receipt pad. “When do you want these back?” she asked us.

My mother spoke first. “I need them by tomorrow.”

“Oh, that won’t be possible,” the lady said without even looking up.

I started to talk back a bit, but had hardly begun my explanation. I was ready to tell her our situation, but I didn’t have to. A man walked out from the back of the shop and called to my mom. “Shirley, is this for what I think this is for?”

“Yes,” she told him. “Don died this morning.”

The man took my dad’s clothes from his assistant and tore up the receipt. “Give me two or three hours and they’ll be ready.”

Mom smiled. “Thank you.”

“And, Shirley, no charge,” he added. “You’ve been a loyal customer. Ever since I opened.”

Eight years and two months later, when my mother died, I didn’t worry too much about her clothes. For the last two months, she’d lived confined to her bed, wearing a hospital gown — and sometimes she’d scoffed at it. As her condition progressed, she began hating clothes. Anything touching her body was uncomfortable. By the time she died, every piece of clothing that she owned was too big for her emaciated body. But I wasn’t worried. Morticians can pin and fold clothing so most anything works well enough.

I thought about the things she needed versus the things that she didn’t need. She didn’t need shoes. Only the top half of her body was going to show in the casket. Only the top half of it opens. I chose a simple cotton matching skirt and top. I didn’t want to send her off in the special dress that she’d worn to my wedding. I wanted her to look just like she would on an ordinary day. An ordinary, healthy day when she might be going off to church or out to lunch with a friend. I wanted her to look recognizable.

At one time, I thought that I hated it all. The whole practice of dressing the dead. I thought that I hated the traditions. People coming to form a receiving line to look at the body, saying things like “she looks so good” and shaking hands or hugging the necks of each family member there, even the unknown ones who needed an introduction. I vowed that I didn’t want that when I died. But I found that I wanted my mother to “look good” in the end.

As I gathered each piece of her last outfit, I made sure to include appropriate undergarments. When I handed the bag of things over to the mortician, I felt a bit sheepish about all that was inside. “I know that…” I started to explain.

“I’ll know just what to do,” he assured me.

“It’s just –“ I had to say it. “She would insist on wearing the slip under the skirt.”

He nodded.

Maybe it started that very day. I’d spent a lifetime keeping a mental tally of all the things that my mother did not teach me. She didn’t tell me a thing about relationships or how to choose a career. She didn’t teach me to make biscuits or fry okra. She didn’t show me how to iron clothes. Someone else told me about bras, tampons, and condoms. But that day when I went to the funeral home to speak with those professionals who would prepare her body and assist with her service, I started realizing what she had taught me. These last things to be done for her were really things that I was doing for me, and I finally understood why Dad’s suit had needed to be cleaned.

And when the gentleman in charge at the funeral home walked me to my car that day, I felt the power of community that my parents had made. “I’ve known your mama for some thirty-five years,” he told me. “I’ll make sure everything’s just right for the service.”

image by Steve Johnson via Pexels