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Lord Have Mercy Janet Kuypers 11/3/14 Looked into the coffin of a man who was once great, at least that’s what I hear, but the cancer ravaged him until his bones crumbled to dust. The family then wondered how the people at the funeral home could make him look like him, and as the family walked into that room, they held their breath for more reasons than death, more reasons than their last viewing of the man they lost, now, once again with meat on his bones. When the services started we all had to follow the reverend’s laments by all periodically proclaiming Lord have mercy. The man with the collar would talk, and I would wonder what it would be like to hold the job of applying make-up to the dead, to try to make them look not so dead. Puff the cheeks, apply face paint to give them color. Lord have mercy. Beforehand, a string of older firemen came to us before the coffin, with small black bands over each of their badges. “When the fire station started, before the town even had a fire station, he used his red truck, with ladders tacked to the sides, and a trailer to haul a barrel of water.” Lord have mercy. The man with the collar started a hymn; everyone in this small town knew the lines and sang along like little lemmings, and I tried to remember the lines from my childhood that I have no reason to say except when people need something, anything, to make them think their life doesn’t have to end. Lord have mercy. The man with the collar reminded the room that people were created for life, that death was not part of the plan. But stifle the overwhelming desire to caress the one you loved, now in a coffin, for the coldness would be too stark a reminder. Lord have mercy. Wanted to try to look into the coffin from a different angle; maybe then the deceased would look more real. Maybe then I wouldn’t see his lack of hair from chemo gone wrong, maybe then I wouldn’t see his hands clasping rosary beads. Lord have mercy. I remember the string of people waiting to meet us before they proceeded to the coffin (which reminded me of the procession of people waiting to congratulate the bride and groom immediately after their wedding ceremony), but in this macabre receiving line all of the funeral attendants were repeatedly saying to us, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and I wonder how many times the man in the coffin had to say those words in his lifetime of service, how hollow these words were when he spoke them, when the words then seemed so stifling, and I think of how people say this when nothing can express how anyone is feeling, especially when people don’t know how to feel anymore. Lord have mercy. # The chants now ended; the Knights of Columbus stopped their constant repeated prayers for the painted man in the coffin, to help us justify the pain we don’t know how to deal with. Lord have mercy, was all I could think, not to call a higher power, but to give empty words at an empty time, with too many injustices in this living death scene. We’re all players in this charade, making up death in a way that we want to believe is not ghoulish, that’s what we keep telling ourselves unless we choose to ignore the macabre while unsettled lives are still around us. We mourn, or cry, and we try to fit this piece into the puzzle of our lives. And for those who believe, and even for those who don’t, these seem the only fitting words to think, or feel... Lord have mercy.

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