Monday
We writers are often told that the path to universality lies through specificity. It is only by making the events in a scene uniquely individual that we can hope for them to resonate with a broad spectrum of readers. This concept struck me head-on in the chapter entitled "The Funeral Home that Had Been Somebody's House," in Us (Tyrant Books, 2011), Michael Kimball's novel written in flash-length chapters. In it the nameless narrator recounts a life-altering moment to which many readers can relate: a child's first contact with death.
The Funeral Home that Had Been Somebody's House
My preoccupation with the dying and the dead started with my Grandfather Kimball when I was fourteen and he was dead. He was the first person who had died in my life and it was the first time that I was going to a funeral. But my mother and my father didn't tell me what to expect when we got out to the funeral home. I only remember that I was told that I had to go, that I had to look nice, and that looking nice meant that I had to comb my hair, wear a belt, and tuck my shirt in.
I got dressed up in my best clothes and the rest of my family did too. We all got into the family car and drove to a little town out in the country where my grandfather had lived. Nobody said anything on the drive out there, but the car windows were open and the driving wind was messing everybody's hair up and making our good clothes seem worn out.
My father parked the family car in a gravel parking lot behind what I thought was somebody's house. I realized later that it had been somebody's house, but that it had become a funeral home. We got out of the family car, walked around to the front of the funeral home, walked up the front steps, opened a screen door, and walked into what must have been somebody's living room and had become the front room of the funeral home.
The screen door closed behind us with a slap against the wood doorframe. The windows in that front room of the funeral home were all open and the wind was blowing through it, but it was still hot and smelled musty inside there.
My mother and my father stopped inside the screen door and my sister and I stopped behind them. My mother and my father were talking to somebody or somebody was talking to them. I don't remember what they said, but I remember that I wasn't included in the conversation and that I started looking around that front room.
I know now that it was the viewing room that we had walked into when we walked into the funeral home, but I didn't know what it was then or why I could see my Grandfather Kimball at the other end of the viewing room all laid out inside his casket.
I knew that he was dead, that his body was going to be inside a casket, that people were going to say nice things about him, and that they were going to bury him in a grave. But I didn't expect it to be so casual—for the funeral home to be somebody's house, for the viewing room to be somebody's living room, and for there to be people standing around talking in somebody's living room while there was a casket with my dead grandfather inside it in the living room too. I thought that I was going to be able to approach my grandfather's casket, and that somehow in that approach that I was going to be able to prepare myself for his death, for him being dead, and for how that was going to feel.
But I wasn't prepared for it. It felt as if I had been punched in the stomach by somebody that I couldn't see when I saw my grandfather's dead body inside a casket and on top of a table in that living room. I didn't know that the casket was going to be open. I didn't know that we were going to have to look at him or that the skin on his face would be so limp that it wouldn't look like his face anymore.
Nobody told me that grief feels like fear. I kept trying to swallow, but my mouth had dried up. My tongue got thick and stuck to the roof of my mouth. My jaw started trembling up and down. I tried to hold my mouth closed with my hand. My eyes started opening and closing too. I tried to keep myself from crying.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I closed my eyes tight and wiped them dry. I took deep breaths. I don't think that anybody else noticed any of this. My mother and my father stopped talking with those other people. We all walked up to my grandfather's casket.
I remember that my father made me look at his father. I remember thinking that must have been what we were there for. I think that my father thought that was what we were supposed to do too—that we were supposed to look nice, look at the dead body, and then sit down to listen to the nice things that were going to be said about the dead person.
I looked, but then looked away. We all turned away from the casket. We all walked back up to a row of chairs in the front of the viewing room and my father told us to sit down there. They were getting ready to say the nice things about my grandfather.
I'm still surprised about the way I felt when I saw my grandfather's dead body. My Grandfather Kimball wasn't somebody that I had any real affection for. I don't have any nostalgic memories of him. We never played catch or played cards or went fishing. He never pulled any quarters out from behind my ears or had any candy in his pockets. I mostly remember him as somebody to be afraid of, but I don't think that it was my grandfather who made me feel afraid then.
reprinted by permission of the author
We learn about the then-fourteen-year-old's thoughts while he's attending his grandfather's funeral. Kimball catches our attention in the narrator's very personal present: "My preoccupation with the dying and the dead started with…." The narrator is not drawn to "death" and "dying," but to "the dying" and "the dead." The rest of the paragraph gently guides us back in time to the particulars of the experience. "But my mother and father didn't prepare me for what to expect…. I only remember that I was told that I had to go, that I had to look nice…comb my hair, wear a belt, tuck my shirt in." Who hasn't seen, or even been, a child in a suit or dress sitting alone or playing with cousins as the adults wearily repeat anecdotes and condolences.
Unprepared for what he would see at the funeral home, the boy tries to make sense of his surroundings. He struggles to process the juxtaposition of a dead family member and what must have been, at one time, a family living room. The adult reality of saying goodbye to a family member does not live up to a child's preconceived notions: "But I didn't expect it to be so casual."
The details keep coming, walking us closer to the moment that changes everything for the narrator. Some of them are observational: "…the car windows were open and the driving wind was messing everybody's hair up and making our good clothes seem worn out." Still other particulars communicate the sense of isolation felt by a child when all of the adults are caught-up in their own grieving: "…but I remember I wasn't included in the conversation."
Finally, death is confronted face-to-face at the grandfather's casket, and we experience the narrator's individual emotional reaction: "Nobody told me that grief feels like fear." And his eventual grasping of the generational truth about loss, that there really isn't a way to fully prepare for death: "I think my father thought that too—that we were supposed to look nice, look at the dead body, and then sit down to listen to people say nice things that were going to be said about the dead person."
In Us, while it's the big picture of death that first catches the eye and ear, it's the particulars that help the reader step inside the story and experience it alongside the narrator, such as here: "…but I don't think that it was my grandfather who made me feel afraid then." The boy's sense of shock becomes our own sense of fear of mortality. This level of detail, hovering somewhere between traditional narrative and stream of consciousness, unites narrator and reader in the universal struggle for meaning and understanding.
About the Author
Rich Grohowski graduated from Kutztown University with degrees in English and Geography, two things for which no one wants to pay you money. So, naturally, he's hoping to hit the big bucks in flash fiction. Along with recently finishing his Teaching Certification at Immaculata University, he is an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) candidate at Rosemont College. His non-fiction writing about food, culture, real estate, and interesting personal histories (pretty much anything, really) has appeared in magazines, newspapers, and even a couple of books.For further reading, check out FlashFiction.Net's suggested readings of flash fiction and prose poetry collections, anthologies, and craft books, by clicking here.
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