I don’t like funerals, probably because I’ve been to far too many of them in my time. And I expected this one to be bad news. I realized it was going to be different, however, as soon as we walked into the chapel, where an invisible organ was playing “Love Is Lovelier the Second Time Around.” The back two rows were packed with people—mostly women and one lone man—from Queen Anne Gardens. Also near the back was the contingent from SHIT—Harry and the two other guys from Squad B, Brad Norton and Aaron Oliver. Close to the front were my friends Ron and Amy Peters, along with their three kids. Ralph and Mary Ames were also in attendance.
The whole front of the chapel was arrayed with floral arrangements. Maybe I had overdone it a little, but not that much. As Beverly had specified, there were two separate boxes of cremains on the altar. Between them stood a color photo of a beaming Beverly Piedmont Jenssen, dressed, for once in her life, in sparkling formal attire.
The photo had been one of those shipboard rites of passage taken prior to the formal-night dinner on the Starfire Breeze during their honeymoon cruise to Alaska. Seeing Beverly’s very sophisticated upswept hairdo, I remembered the firefight that had resulted when Lars had made the tactical blunder of comparing Beverly’s hairdo to the fender on a ’57 Cadillac. If you studied the photo closely, you could see the edge of Lars’s glasses where someone, using one of those computerized photo-editing programs, had excised him from the formal pose.
Lars leaned over me. “Ja, sure,” he said. “Yust look at all the flowers. Who do you t’ink sent them?”
“No idea,” I said.
Robert Staunton, the chaplain from Queen Anne Gardens, officiated at the ceremony and did a credible job of it. It was clear from his remarks that he knew Lars and Beverly well, and that he had liked and respected them. What he had to say was in fact a celebration of the love and caring they had brought to each other late in life.
Toward the end of the service Staunton opened the proceedings for comments from friends and family. I was surprised when Kelly handed Kyle over to Jeremy and stepped up to the microphone.
“I didn’t meet my great-grandmother at all until just a few years ago,” Kelly said. “But I know she loved us even when we weren’t together, and I’m grateful to have known her at all. And I’m grateful to Lars for making her so happy.”
That pretty well said it for me. There wasn’t a single thing I could have added to that statement, so I didn’t try.
When it came time to leave the chapel, Lars handed the two boxes of cremains over to Scott for safekeeping. Then he picked up the photo and carried it with him for the remainder of the day, clutching it to his chest as though it were a talisman that would drive away the several elderly women who did tend to cluster around him. As far as they were concerned, however, Lars Jenssen’s opinion to the contrary, I never saw anything at all in the women’s behavior that was the least bit inappropriate. They seemed like nice, ordinary women who were clucking in order to express sincere concern for someone who had lost his mate. Period. If one of them was dead set on maneuvering Lars into the sack, I didn’t see any evidence of it.
Scott and Jeremy loaded all the flowers into the back of Scott’s rented Taurus to take back to Belltown Terrace for the reception. As they were doing the loading, Lars was busy obsessing about how he’d manage to write all the thank-you notes.
“Not to worry,” Mel assured him. “I’ll handle it.”
Thus saving my bacon one more time.
We made it through the reception in fairly good shape. I had been prepared to take the whole group out to dinner, but Scott let me know that wasn’t necessary. “Jeremy and Cherisse haven’t spent much time in Seattle,” he said. “And, according to them, Kayla spent her whole day’s worth of good behavior at the funeral. We’re going to go out for pizza and then tomorrow we’re going to go sightseeing. If you want to come along…”
Somehow the idea of my kids’ spending some adult time together because they wanted to, without squabbling and without parental enforcement, was an idea that warmed me. “I think I’ll take a pass on pizza and sightseeing,” I said. “But maybe we can have dinner together tomorrow night.”
Mel caught my eye. “We’re booked tomorrow evening, remember?” she said. Then she added, “Although, if you want to spend time with your kids, I can go alone.”
Then I remembered—the fund-raising auction and the tux.
I also knew that the day had gone as well as it had due, in no small measure, to Melissa Soames’s efforts. I owed her.
“How long are you staying in town?” I asked.
Scott grinned. “The desk clerk said our bill is paid until Sunday, so we aren’t going home before then. Really, though, Sunday is when our plane leaves, and that’s when Kelly and Jeremy plan to head back, too.”
“Saturday, then,” I said. “We’ll make a day of it and have dinner together on Saturday.”