CHAPTER 19
A woman in a pencil skirt with her hair up in a severe knot showed us the way to the back of the mortuary, past the viewing rooms with chairs set up in neat rows, to a room where Tobias’s body lay on a metal table.
“Oh!” said Anna, and she stepped back at the sight of him.
I stood behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
The woman who had brought us here had already disappeared.
“Yes. It just gave me such a start. I thought for a moment—” She shook her head. “It’s like him, and not like him at the same time. How very strange.” She stepped closer to the body and looked it over carefully without touching it. There was a white sheet over the chest and the lower half of the body.
I was carrying the grey temple bag Anna had given me at the house. Inside it were all the things we would need for this; I had checked before we left. The smell was strongly floral.
Anna pulled the sheet down a little. “His scar there,” she said, pointing to a spot on his lower stomach.
I glanced at it and saw a long, puckered scar. “Do you know how he got it?” I asked.
Anna shook her head, then let out a long sigh. “We should get started,” she said.
They had asked us to be finished by one o’clock so that they could make sure the body was transported to the chapel by two, when the funeral was supposed to start.
I put the temple bag on a chair near the body, opened the zipper and pulled out the garments. They were snowy white and soft cotton. Brand new, most likely, and not the threadbare, greying kind Kurt tended to wear, no matter how many times I suggested gently to him that it was time to buy new ones. Kurt seemed to think garments lasted forever, as if that were some kind of bonus blessing for those who wore them regularly and served God in them.
“Top first?” said Anna practically.
I bunched the top up around the neck and she lifted up Tobias’s head as we pulled the fabric over it. Then it was my turn to lift up his arms. They felt so heavy and limp that I had a momentary flashback to my daughter’s birth/death. They had handed her to me as soon as she was born, as they would have handed me a live child. She was small, but she felt heavy because she was not moving. Her limbs had felt like rubbery weights and her skin tone had been dark. I remember her fingernails in particular, and how dead and black they looked.
I got one of Tobias’s arms through an armhole, then the other. Anna tugged down the shirt over Tobias’s stomach. I had to help her lift his body so we could smooth down the back. I was breathing heavily with effort, but I nodded, glad we’d managed it by ourselves.
Anna got out the bottoms and pulled off the sheet that covered his lower half. I was happy to discover it wasn’t embarrassing at all to see Tobias nude. It wasn’t him anymore. It was just a shape of human flesh.
Anna wiped at her sweat and then we pulled the bottoms up to meet the top. Somehow that felt like half the battle. Tobias looked more himself now. She tucked the top in all around the waist.
I glanced at the nearly invisible white thread embroidery, a reminder of specific promises in the temple to follow God. There were three marks, two on the top and one on one leg. People make fun of Mormons’ special underwear, and I could see why, although the underwear itself isn’t so strange—there are new styles every few years to keep up with the expectations of each generation. We don’t wear the ankle- and wrist-length garments our great-grandparents wore, and we don’t have slits in the back for bathroom stops the way our parents and grandparents did.
There are stories about the mystical power of garments to keep people safe. I had heard about a man who was caught in a house fire. He went to the hospital to be treated and when they cut off his clothes, they found his skin under his garments untouched. There is a specific promise in the temple that protection to various body parts would be offered to those who keep their promises, signified by the marks in the garments. I had always believed it was a metaphorical protection, rather than a physical one. But who am I to tell other people their faith is wrong and foolish? If I believe in God even a little, I’ve already passed into the area of the unscientific.
I got out the rest of the clothes. We put on the white shirt, Anna carefully smoothing out the collar and buttoning each of the tiny buttons, even the ones on the wrist. We put on the white slacks, white socks and slippers. And then at last, the final temple garments: the green apron, white robe, hat, and sash.
When it was finished, Anna and I both leaned over the table and caught our breath.
“He looks handsome, doesn’t he?” said Anna, stepping back.
He still looked dead, I thought.
“Thank you for coming with me and doing this with me.”
“Of course,” I said automatically.
“No.” Anna grabbed my hand and pressed it to her face. “You are a true friend. To do this with me—of all things. I can’t ever thank you enough.” Her eyes glistened.
Startled by her sudden gesture, I said, “I’m glad that you were able to share it with me.”
Anna looked at Tobias one last time, and then we walked out of the mortuary, stopping at the desk to tell the woman that Tobias was dressed for an open casket.
I drove Anna back to her house. “Do you want me to come in and stay until the funeral?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It’s only a couple of hours. And Tomas and Liam wanted to talk to me privately, I think.”
So I dropped her off and went home to find Kurt was already there, dressing in his Sunday best. I changed and put on my own black funeral dress. I hadn’t had one before I became the bishop’s wife, but I attended every funeral in the ward now.
Since we had enough time, Kurt and I walked over to the church. I held his arm and I was glad to be with him, but we didn’t talk. We never talked before or after funerals.
The church was open and we could hear the music coming from the organ in the chapel as we stepped in the back door. The chapel was nearly full, which meant there were over a hundred people here. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized so many people cared for Tobias, especially since a Friday funeral required people to take time off work. Kurt went to the podium and I sat down in one of the front rows. In a few minutes, Anna came to sit by me, along with Tomas and Liam and their wives, who had flown in just that morning.
It was a nice service. Tomas and Liam both spoke. Tomas emphasized his father’s love of order and how it emerged in the garden and in the way he disciplined his sons. He simply told them what he expected, and then told them he was disappointed if they didn’t achieve it. Apparently, Tomas felt that he frequently disappointed his father. He didn’t say a word about his mother, Helena. He did mention a few tender moments he had seen between Tobias and Anna, and talked about how he aspired to have that kind of marriage with his own wife.
There was a short musical number, which someone else must have arranged, because it had nothing to do with the family. Two young women and two young men from our ward sang “How Great Thou Art” in four-part harmony. I wished I had less musical training when I heard them. I was jolted by some bad notes. But it was soon over, and it was Liam’s turn to speak.
Liam began with, “I know that at a funeral, it’s traditional to talk only about the best parts of the deceased’s life. But I am not going to do that here. I am going to tell you all the worst parts of my father.”
I turned to Anna, who had gone a little pale. I reached for her hand and patted it. “Kurt is up there. Kurt is in charge, as the bishop,” I whispered to her. But to myself, I wondered what in God’s name Liam thought he was doing. If he had a grievance with his father, now was not the time to air it in public.
“My father was a fierce man with a temper,” said Liam.
The hammer, I thought, and squeezed Anna’s hand more tightly. I could see Kurt edging forward on his seat.
“He got angry about many things. He was angry about evil in the world. He read the newspaper every morning and sometimes he would slam his fist down over injustice, or people being hurt.” Liam looked down at Anna. “He would remind Tomas and me that he had better never hear of us hurting anyone, or we would regret it.”
I was very tense.
“And then he would go out into the garden and he would attack the dirt as if it were those bad men he had read about. And he would water it, weed it, smooth out the dirt and make it perfect again.”
I stared at the strength in Liam’s hands as he mimed hacking into and then smoothing the dirt, and I thought again of the photo of the beautiful woman Anna had shown me. I thought of how gentle the Tobias I had known had always been, and how people are often different when they are alone. I also thought of the guilt that came from doing the wrong thing, and how it could transform an entire life.
“And then he would come back inside and be my father again,” said Liam, “until he read the newspaper the next day, and he had to go out to his garden.” He paused for a long moment. “Many people thought my father spent too much time in the garden. They might have wondered if he was neglecting us. But Tomas and I always knew. The garden was his place to be angry. And when he came back to us, he was finished with that. When the flowers grew, and when we picked the tomatoes fresh, they were what my father did with his anger. He felt more than most men, and he didn’t try to stop feeling. But he found a way to use even his anger to make the world a more beautiful place.”
Liam took a long, shuddering breath.
I realized that Anna’s hand was trembling in mine, and my reservations about Liam’s speech melted away.
“Another of my father’s worst qualities was his way of forgetting. He had a terrible memory. Sometimes he forgot important things. Like the time he forgot to come in and spank me the way he said he would. He let me sit and wait for him for two hours, until I fell asleep. And in the morning, when I asked him if he was ever going to do it, he said he had forgotten.
“He forgot his anniversary with Anna one year, and he forgot her birthday. But for Christmas that year, he bought her a new car because he was worried her old car might stall on the freeway and put her in danger.” Liam was clearly struggling with his emotions. He kept wiping at his eyes, but never broke down completely. He had learned control from his father, I thought.
“He forgot once why he had started a lawsuit with an old friend and told the lawyer that he couldn’t pursue in court a case he had forgotten everything about, could he?
“He forgot that he’d told me that I wouldn’t get my driver’s license until I finished my Eagle Scout project, and let me get it anyway; and he forgot that I was the one who had dented his door the first time I took his car out, and he always told everyone he had done it himself.”
Anna was openly weeping at my side. I could see that Kurt was using a tissue on his eyes and nose, too.
“And the last flaw of my father was that he kept secrets. Terrible secrets. Every night when he tucked me into bed, he whispered into my ear that I was his favorite. He told me that I couldn’t tell Tomas because it wasn’t fair, that he wasn’t supposed to pick favorites.” He looked over at his brother and shared a tremulous smile.
“It wasn’t until I was nearly a teenager that I realized that he told Tomas the same thing every night, that Tomas was his favorite. So I suppose that’s another of my father’s worst parts that I wasn’t counting. He was a liar. He told me once that he would never leave me, and now he’s a liar about that, too.” He began to sob and Kurt had to help him back to his seat.
The room was utterly silent, except for sniffling sounds and the rustling of tissues.
Then it was Kurt’s turn to speak. He read from the Book of Mormon about where the righteous go after death, which was to either immediate resurrection or a place of rest where they could be with God. Then he, too, spoke of Tobias’s garden: “I have no doubt that Tobias will find some way to garden in heaven. Only there the plants he grows will be souls, because Tobias was always good at seeing the soul behind any action. He knew that gardens weren’t about dirt any more than people were about sin. You have to touch the dirt to work in it, but you clean yourself afterward and you watch what grows from your work.” He mimed washing his hands and held them up to the audience. I felt enormously proud of Kurt at that moment. My husband and my bishop, both.
Kurt finished with some words about how glad he was that he’d had a chance to know Tobias and that he was honored to be his bishop. Then he closed the service and invited people to stay for the luncheon.
Anna and Tomas and Liam would drive to the cemetery and Kurt would do a simple grave dedication there, then they would all come back and try to enjoy the company of the ward members who loved them while sharing a late luncheon prepared by the Relief Society.
I helped Anna to the car waiting for her, and then went into the kitchen to find Cheri Tate hard at work. She was supervising the warming of funeral potatoes and counting out cups with punch in them to be taken on a dolly to the cultural hall and distributed around the tables that had already been put up.
“What can I do to help?” I asked her.
She assigned me to organize the dessert table and make sure everything had been cut up properly so people could serve themselves.
I went out to the cultural hall and found Gwen Ferris was there.
“I didn’t know you knew Tobias,” I said.
“I didn’t,” said Gwen. “But I know Anna. She and I worked on the homemaking committee together last year She is such a wonderful person, I had to come and show my support for her here.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said, thinking that Gwen had her own problems to deal with, whatever they were. But they say service helps you forget yourself.
Forgetting, I thought. Secrets and anger. What did Liam’s talk about Tobias really mean? At the time, I had been mostly concerned about Anna’s feelings and the funeral itself, but as I went over his points about his father, it worried me more than it comforted me.
“I wish I had known Tobias better He sounds like a wonderful father,” said Gwen, helping me set out serving utensils and then small plates at each dessert.
“Mmm,” I said.
“Do you think that Brad would ever be like that?” asked Gwen.
I had to shake myself to process the question. “Brad seems like a wonderful man,” I said, remembering my conversation with him in Kurt’s office. I should be focusing on Gwen here, not my own wandering thoughts about Tobias. Tobias was gone, but Gwen was here. “How are things between you?”
“Fine. Good,” said Gwen. “I mean, we have our problems, but Brad is such a good man. I’m so lucky to have found him.” She looked away, focusing on the dessert plates.
“He loves you very much,” I said.
She nodded. “I love him, too. I wish—” She cut herself off, though I wanted very much to know what she wished.
“Things are going to be all right,” I told her.
She jerked her head up to look at me. “How do you know?” she asked.
“I don’t know anything about the details,” I said, meeting her eyes. “I just mean that I believe God loves us and that whatever He asks us to suffer, we can find meaning in it. I hope that doesn’t sound glib.”
“I’ll think about that,” Gwen said slowly. “I’ve heard people say that God never gives us more than we can handle, but there are days—”
I interrupted her. “I hate that saying, as if God is playing some game with us, or as if we are making too much out of little things. I believe that God weeps with us, the way that a parent weeps with a child over a lost friend. He may know that we will recover, but that doesn’t make our losses any less.”
After a moment, I realized my words had affected Gwen deeply. She was staring at me as if there was light streaming around me. What a thought. I wasn’t any holier than anyone else. If anything, less so. But once again, there was a marvelous sense of power in helping others, in being the tool in God’s hands.
“I never thought of Him weeping with us,” she said.
“Most important scripture of all time: Jesus wept,” I said.
“Sometimes I feel so selfish, getting upset over little stupid things,” Gwen said, her gaze dropping again. “They aren’t the things Jesus should have to weep with me about.”
“If we’re weeping over it, then it’s not little to us,” I said.
Cheri Tate called me from the kitchen, and I went to her. I ended up spending most of the rest of the afternoon running back and forth and I didn’t have a chance to see Gwen Ferris again. She must have left as soon as the luncheon was served.
Cheri and I stayed late cleaning up. Kurt made sure Anna got home with her sons and then had to go back to the office to get some things done. I called Samuel at seven to make sure he was all right and could find himself dinner with leftovers in the fridge, then I helped Cheri until we locked up at about nine.
We had to get all the garbage out to the dumpster, turn off every light, vacuum all the floors, and clean the bathrooms. And that was after we had finished in the kitchen, washing every dish by hand because there was no dishwasher, and then drying them and placing them back in the cupboards. Wiping down every counter, and then mopping the floors, cleaning out the refrigerator, scrubbing the stove tops and inside the oven. There was a long list laminated on the back door of the kitchen that detailed every chore to be done before we could lock up.
“How are Perdita and Jonathan?” I asked Cheri as we walked out to her car.
“They seem very happy,” said Cheri, as if she were surprised.
“I’m glad,” I said, and walked home despite Cheri’s offer of a ride. I was glad to breathe the fresh spring air and I didn’t even mind the hill that led to the Torstensen house. The lights were on inside and I was tempted to stop in, but Anna and I had both had a long day. I’d talk to her tomorrow, and I’d get out of my head all thoughts of hammers, blood, and bodies buried in gardens.