I’ll tell you girls about this after Spencer dies, so don’t pretend that it comes as a big surprise. I want a Quaker funeral. And don’t get yourselves into a swivet: it will be easier than you think. Surely, between the four of you, you can do this last thing for me.
Not exactly and precisely Quaker, I know that. I mean, Quaker-style. What I mean is my body should be disposed of before the service, and I don’t want a service either. By which I mean: No prayers. No minister. Anyone who wants to get up and say something is free to do so but nobody is required to. It should last at least twenty minutes but no more than forty. Or maybe forty-five.
Also no flowers. Also no memorial donations, no memorial plantings, no memorial plaques. Life is too short for all these memorials. It’s supposed to be short, and when it’s over, it’s supposed to be over.
Except for a tombstone. After the cremation—
“What cremation?” we interrupted, almost in unison. “Did she ever say anything to you about a cremation?” we asked one another, and we all denied it. “Do you think she meant it?” we asked, remembering how Mumma drifted in and out of full awareness even before Pops died. But those were also the same months during which she incorporated her business, making herself inessential to it (“But don’t start thinking you don’t need me. Nobody knows it like I do, all the ins and outs of the properties, all my connections”), making Amy the CEO, George chairman of a board of directors, and naming the rest of us board members, making it possible for business to be carried on without her and therefore making possible our continuing incomes from it. Since she had designed and accomplished the transition during that same time, we couldn’t tell ourselves that her mind had been failing her. “Maybe she really did mean it,” we said. “But then, why didn’t she cremate Pops?”
“I’m going to make us some coffee,” I announced. “I need a few minutes to digest this.”
“There’s more,” Meg said.
“Could I have tea instead?” Jo asked. “You have herbal, don’t you? For Sarah?” Jo could smoke cigarettes and at the same time eschew caffeine without worrying over the contradiction. Only Sarah pointed it out to her. The rest of us went no further than refusing to let her smoke in our houses or cars.
“We won’t read ahead,” Meg promised me. “I don’t know how I feel about cremation.”
“I don’t know how I feel about interments,” I answered over my shoulder as I left the room. I cocked the swinging door open so as not to miss anything, and added, “About dressing my mother up in her good clothes and sealing her into a coffin so she can rot away more slowly than nature intended, for example.”
“Please, Beth, don’t start,” they said. “Why do you have to do that?”
Satisfied, I set about putting on water for tea, filling the coffeemaker. I poured half-and-half into a little glass pitcher Mumma had brought back from Venice, took out the cut-glass sugar bowl she had taken from Grandmother’s pantry after that death, and set them on a tray with cups and saucers. Then I exchanged the cups and saucers for mugs.
Meg came out to help me, so I must have been taking longer than they thought I should. But she still had to wait a few minutes; they would all have to wait. I assembled a selection of tea bags on a little plate. Meg studied my refrigerator door, photographs and silly magnets, cards reminding us of appointments and, occupying almost the entire top third of the door, the magnetized whiteboard on which Sarah kept current the family calendar. It was Sarah’s schedule on that whiteboard that captured Meg’s attention.
“How does she have the energy?” Meg asked—rhetorically, I assumed, since Sarah’s energy level was as obvious to anyone as Mumma’s had been.
“It’s her organizational ability that impresses me.”
“And she hasn’t even included schoolwork.”
“Exams, papers and reports, unit tests too. Those she does put on,” I said.
“It’s a little obsessive, you have to admit. For a sixth-grader.”
“Kids can be obsessive about school. You were.”
“But she actually checks things off.” Meg pointed at the previous day, a Wednesday, which sported a column of red checks beside its list of activities.
I continued defending my unwieldy daughter. “Her self-discipline impresses me, too.” I filled a teapot with boiling water.
“Maybe it’s self-discipline,” Meg said, “or maybe she’s controlling.”
I picked up the tray of mugs and sugar. “You bring in the teapot.”
Meg followed me into the dining room. “I hope we can get this all sorted out before they get back.”
“When does the movie get out?” Amy asked.
“Otherwise, Sarah will start finding faults in our ideas, and fixing them.” Jo grinned.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” I said, and passed out mugs. “So.” I sat down again. “It’s cremation, then. Agreed?”
“You’ve never been firm enough with Sarah,” Meg told me.
“Unless somebody really objects?” I persisted.
Nobody did. We tasted our tea and coffee, refocusing our attention on the matter at hand, on Mumma.
“The nursing home will know how to arrange a cremation,” Jo told us. “If Mumma hasn’t already set it up. Finish reading the letter, Meg.”
Also, I want my ashes buried next to your father, even if it is in the Howland plot. On the tombstone I want engraved “The rest is silence.” Unless you think that’s too intellectual, or too grandiose for me, so maybe I’d rather have “life’s not a paragraph.”
We looked around the table at one another in response to yet another of Mumma’s allusions. “Life’s not a paragraph? What does that mean?”
Jo had the answer. “‘And death i think is no parenthesis.’” At the incomprehension on our faces, she added, “It’s cummings. You know, e. e. cummings, he didn’t use capital letters.”
I knew that, but, “You read cummings?” I asked my sister.
“It’s one of the books Pops gave me. I was…nineteen? Twenty? So I did read it, and you know what? I still do. But I didn’t know Mumma had.”
“Well,” Amy said, “if it was a book Pops picked out for you, she wouldn’t want not to know about it.”
We agreed wordlessly, and Meg read on:
If you want to make me happy, you’ll send everyone straight home right after the service. I never liked those parties the Howlands like to have after funerals, the way people come and eat and drink and talk about you behind your back. Your father would have wanted it, as part of being a Howland, so I gave him one, but do me a favor and don’t.
Or maybe on my tombstone you should just put Beloved Wife, like on your father’s.
We all remembered the matter of Pops’ tombstone. Mumma had decided that under his name and the dates of his lifespan, she wanted to engrave BELOVED HUSBAND. “Because he was,” she explained, relaying her decision to us.
“What about us?” I demanded. “What about his daughters?”
“What about you?” she demanded right back. “You weren’t married to him.”
“What about ‘Beloved Father’? That’s what Beth means,” Jo had said. Generously giving the benefit of the doubt to both of us, she added, “Beth means what about putting both on the stone, ‘Beloved Husband’ and ‘Beloved Father.’ Isn’t that right, Beth?”
In fact, I hadn’t thought about that. I’d only thought about being excluded, but of course Jo was right; that was it exactly. “We loved him, too,” I reminded Mumma.
“Well I know that,” she said. “Anyone who knew your father loved him. Just, not many people knew him. Not like how many people know me.”
We got our way, got to declare our affection on Pops’ grave, and now we were about to find ourselves in a similar position in reference to our mother. Sometimes things never changed, I thought, and I thought my sisters would agree with me. But I didn’t expect that Mumma would too, so I was surprised when Meg read:
Whether or not you put down Belo
ved Mother, that’s up to you. I have no say in that, especially now, although if you are wondering, I always thought you girls were fine daughters.
Or maybe I’d like you to put on it “She didn’t waste a minute,” because I didn’t, did I? In plain letters, none of that fancydancy lettering like your aunt Phyllis has. Until this Alzheimer’s, I mean, of course. I am writing this with a clear mind, so don’t fool yourselves about that. But don’t think I don’t know, because I do. I mean, know what’s wrong, I don’t need any doctor to tell me about it when there is something wrong with me.
Or maybe there should be just my dates, none of this beloved business. You’ll just have to decide for yourselves.
I hope you’ll manage all this all right. It’s work, as you’ll find out, a funeral. Hard work and minimum satisfaction. But I was never afraid of hard work.
Maybe that should be my tombstone? “She wasn’t afraid of hard work.”
You’ll miss me, and I apologize for that even though it’s not my fault. You’ll have already been missing me, but I hope for not too long.
She signed it:
With my love, and if you think it’s not you ought to think again because you’re not as smart as you think a lot of the time,
Mumma.
We were leaking tears, smiling ironically at one another, irritated and bereft. I brought out a box of tissues and we began planning our mother’s non-funeral, her non-memorial, her burial.
“We’re not in any hurry, are we?” asked Jo. “That’s one of the advantages of cremation, you don’t have a limited time. So the first question is the venue, not the date.”
“I can write the obituary,” I volunteered.
“No, we need your help arranging for the place,” Amy said. “I’ll do the obituary.”
Meg objected. “Mumma wouldn’t have wanted an obituary. It was Uncle Ethan who did Pops,’ remember?”
Jo objected, “Yes she would, just not the Globe, not the Times, not a Howland obituary. She’d want the Cape Codder.”
I asked, “Why can’t I do the obituary?”
Amy answered impatiently. “Because you’re not only local, you’re also the one who lived in Cambridge and you have friends who are Quakers, don’t you? Somebody has to ask. If Mumma’s going to have a Quaker funeral. You can help with the obituary, will that satisfy you?”
“The Cambridge Friends Meeting House?” I asked, astounded. “You don’t understand.”
“Not necessarily there,” Amy said. “But at any meetinghouse. Ask if it would be possible for a non-Quaker to use the space. Otherwise, there’s no point in trying to locate one, is there?”
So I telephoned one friend, then another, and for good measure a third, to discover that what Mumma wanted was not possible. I hadn’t thought it would be, but I was still disappointed.
“We did tell her,” Jo reminded us. “After Pops’ funeral, we did.”
I was trying to think of ways around the problem. A full family conversion? A donation to the American Friends Service so large that they couldn’t refuse us the use—just for forty or forty-five minutes—of a meetinghouse?
“So we’d better ask at St. Stephen’s,” Amy said. “Although I can guess how they’ll feel about a nonreligious ceremony.”
“Who’s the minister there now?” Meg asked me.
“It’s a woman. Janice Lauter, a little younger than we are, never married.”
“Why not?”
“Mumma told me—”
“Mumma actually asked?”
“Of course. She wanted to know. Everybody wondered, but Mumma asked. It turns out that when she was in seminary, Janice took a vow of celibacy. Janice is a real priest. Not Catholic, but, I mean, she’s a real religious. She visited Mumma sometimes, here, and then at the home, too. I don’t know if they were friends, but…I think Mumma respected her,” I concluded.
“Will you ask her?” Jo asked me. “I’ll go with you. Tomorrow morning? Do you think we need an appointment?”
“I’ll call in the morning and find out. But you have to remember, I don’t go to church.”
“Neither did Mumma. That didn’t mean she didn’t think about God,” Amy pointed out.
“She didn’t think much of God,” I pointed out.
“You’re wrong,” Jo told me. “It was organized religion she didn’t care for. It was religious organizations. They bring out the worst in people, don’t you remember her saying that?”
I remembered. “As if they think heaven is a club that they can keep people out of. Or some election and they’re running to win the seat.”
“She was always reading about religions,” Amy reminded us.
“And she made us go to Sunday school,” Jo added. “She wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t meant something to her.”
“I’ll call Janice,” I assured them.
That was everything. The staff at the home was packing up Mumma’s few belongings, and I would pick them up in a day or two, so there was nothing for us to do right then. All we could do was sit together and watch the candles burn down.
• • •
The next morning, early, we met Janice in the church. She wore a plain priestly outfit, simple black skirt and black shirt with the white collar close around her neck, but her shoes were stylish. They weren’t the high heels Mumma would have worn, but they looked like Joan & David to me, and they showed off slender ankles. We three stood together at the rear of Saint Stephen’s. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Janet greeted us, clasping first my hand, then Jo’s, in both of hers, her expression sorrowful but her eyes serene and clear, accepting, hopeful. Her long graying hair curved up into a twist at the back of her head; she wore no makeup. (“The new minister at Saint Stephen’s has style,” Mumma had reported, with satisfaction.)
“Thank you,” Jo said.
“Thank you,” I said. I had always liked this church, with its tall stained-glass windows and white-painted traceries. I had always been comfortable in it, as a child in the Sunday School, as a bride, as a mother having my daughters baptized.
“What can I do for you today?” Janice asked in her unassertive voice. She wasn’t the kind of person to catch Mumma’s attention, I would have said, and not the kind of person to whom Mumma would have appealed, but once again I would have been wrong about my mother.
I told her that we’d come about Mumma’s burial, and she frowned, slightly—at the seriousness of the occasion, I thought, not at the prospect of burying Mumma. She invited us back to her office, where she sat down behind a desk that simultaneously dwarfed her and made her more formidable. Jo and I sat facing her in high-backed wooden armchairs.
“Your mother wasn’t a parishioner,” Janet reminded us gently.
“My father was,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t that count? Like Social Security?”
“Then you would like me to conduct the service here for her? I want to say right off, I am honored that you ask.”
I told her that Mumma had requested—“Well, instructed actually,” I said, and Janice nodded, she knew Mumma—that there be no religious service. I told her that Mumma wanted a Quaker-style event and described the format she had set out.
Before I had finished speaking, Janice was shaking her head with pastoral regret. “That isn’t possible, I’m afraid. If someone is to be buried from the church, it needs to be within the church rituals.”
“Is there a definite restriction?” I asked. “I mean, would it have to be a traditional funeral? To be in the church, I mean. Like, are all of your weddings here, in the church, strictly traditional? Because mine wasn’t,” I told her, since she hadn’t officiated at it.
“Your mother told me, you were all married out of Saint Stephen’s,” Janice said.
“I’m not married,” Jo said.
“Yes,” Janice smiled. “I remember. Excluding you, and also Meg’s first marriage took place somewhere else, I think?”
“Mexico,” I supplied,
as if it mattered.
“The others,” Janice said, and we had to agree. “But you see, Beth, I wasn’t the priest at those times. At the time of your own somewhat nontraditional wedding, for example. Much of what happens here in the church falls within the discretion of the priest, yes, but this is first and foremost the house of God. I am God’s priest in the Episcopal Church. So you see…” She spread her hands wide, in pastoral helplessness.
“Actually, no, I don’t,” I said.
“That I can’t offer the church for what is essentially a pagan ritual.”
“Quakers aren’t pagans,” I said.
“Your mother wasn’t a Quaker,” she reminded me.
“And it wouldn’t be pagan anyway because there wouldn’t be non-Christian gods,” I said.
“I should have said secular,” Janice answered serenely. “I really meant secular.”
“Some of the people who speak—you can’t be sure about this ahead of time—they might be religious and say prayers. Someone will probably say a traditional prayer,” I offered. “Mumma knew a wide range of people, all colors, all creeds.”
But Janice wasn’t to be moved, so Jo and I exited with the problem unsolved.
“You have to respect her convictions,” Jo told me as we got into my car.
“They’re inconvenient,” I answered.
“Convictions tend to be,” Jo reminded me.
“What, are you trying to fill Mumma’s shoes?” I demanded. We traveled on for several minutes of offended silence before I said, “I’m sorry, Jo, I didn’t mean—But if Saint Stephen’s won’t bury her, who will?”
As it turned out, we did have other options. The day after Mumma’s death, I had a visit from Yuri McGonigle, who had been Wampanoag’s first selectman for at least twenty-two years, and maybe longer; I date his tenure from the time Mumma ran against him and lost. We were sitting dispiritedly around the dining room table, trying to decide if going out for lunch would lift or sink our spirits, and Sarah was in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies on the theory that we all needed a sugar hit, when the doorbell rang and it was Yuri McGonigle.