Page 77 of Birds of a Feather

I realised I was in the denial stage of grief, and probably a little hungover, when I nearly suggested we ask Gran. The abrupt realisation this was impossible smacked me a new blow.

‘Well, why don’t we take our cues from what she wanted for Grandpa’s funeral?’ I suggested, blinking away a fresh flow of tears. ‘I can’t remember all the details, but the funeral director must have them on file or something. I mean, we know where she held the service, and I remember she once insisted on a plain and inexpensive casket. We can assume that what she chose for his funeral were the things she’d like for hers.’

My family nodded their heads in unison. Gerry dabbed her nose with a tissue.

‘You’re right, Bethie,’ Mum said. ‘Good thinking. The funeral director is due at 10.30. We’ll ask then.’

‘But before we get to that, we need to register her death,’ I continued. The word ‘death’ caught in my throat. ‘I researched the process last night, and there’s paperwork that needs to be filled out and certificates that need to be obtained. Mum, do you know where her birth certificate is? And we’ll need the date of her marriage, and the birth dates and occupations of her parents.

‘And we should let her friends know,’ I continued. ‘Word has already spread through her volunteer networks, but we need to tell her family friends, and any relatives out there. Perhaps this afternoon, when we’ve got the details of the funeral, we can go through the contact list in her phone and her rolodex and divvy up the calls.

‘Then, at some stage, we’ll need to advise the tax office, social services and Medicare; get in touch with her accountant and bank; and think about what services we disconnect from the house.’ I ran through the checklist I’d made on my phone.

‘My goodness, Bethie,’ Mum said, having obviously given none of this any thought at all. ‘We’re so lucky to have you around to think of all these things.’

She reached out and squeezed my hand, and Dad gave me a side hug. I couldn’t recall a time they had praised my organisation skills. For a moment, I felt appreciated.

~

Nora, the funeral director, was a portly middle-aged woman who arrived wearing a sympathetic smile, a white suit and a navy blue broad-brimmed hat. She removed her hat as she crossed the threshold and then greeted us one by one with an unexpectedly firm, gloved handshake. She irritated me immediately.

Mum welcomed Nora into Gran’s kitchen, and we shuffled around the table to accommodate an extra chair.

‘I always enjoy the opportunity to meet with a deceased person’s family in their home,’ she announced. ‘It helps me to get a sense of who they were. And I can see by looking around that Eliza was a very special lady.’

‘Elise,’ I said, more curtly than I’d intended but not more than she deserved. ‘Her name was Elise.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ Nora replied, rifling through her papers as if looking for evidence of a clerical error of someone else’s doing. ‘I’m so very sorry. Elise.’

Having not uncovered anything that would exonerate her from her faux pas, she uncapped her pen and poised it officiously above the lined pad she’d produced from her navy briefcase.

‘Now,’ she began, scanning each of our faces. ‘Have you thought about when you might like to have the funeral?’

‘We were thinking this Friday,’ Mum replied.

‘Right,’ Nora said and then moistened her index finger with what I thought was an unnecessary amount of licking, before thumbing through a large diary that she had also produced from her briefcase. ‘The thirteenth. Good. Good. Yes, that will work nicely.’

It peeved me that Nora found it necessary to assure us that the date we had selected to bury Gran suited her schedule. I wondered if she expected us to congratulate Gran when we caught up in the afterlife for dying on a day that was convenient.

‘Wait,’ Jarrah interjected. ‘That’s Friday the thirteenth. We can’t have it then.’

We all turned to look at Jarrah.

‘Why’s that?’ Dad asked indulgently.

‘Because it’s an unlucky date,’ she said, her eyes bugged as though it should be obvious. ‘We can’t lay her to rest on an unlucky day.’

‘She’s already dead, Jarrah,’ I snapped. ‘I don’t think she’ll mind. And what’s the worst that can happen? It will bring her bad luck?’

Nora turned the page of her diary and tutted quietly as she digested what she discovered overleaf.

‘It’s just that …’ Nora began before pausing to make a clicking noise under her breath. ‘The next few days are quite …’

‘It’s fine,’ Mum interrupted. ‘It’s just a date, Jarrah. And Bethie’s right; Gran wouldn’t have minded. I think Friday is good. It will give us time to get organised without dragging the whole thing out.’

‘Well, don’t blame me if she comes back to haunt us all,’ Jarrah said, crossing her slender arms across her chest in a huff.

For a fleeting, irrational moment, I wished she would haunt us. I would have been thrilled to spend one more minute with Gran, even if she was a poltergeist with a bone to pick.

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