Mom immediately quit smoking cigarettes, and she enforced the non-smoking rule on Dad when she caught him smoking some old pipe tobacco that he had put on the shelves years before when smoking a pipe was his thing. Dad reluctantly cooperated, but he truly did quit smoking for the last two years of his life.
He and I had planned succession of the estate to Mom for years. The only "final affair" that had to be dealt with were his and Mom's funerals. It would be at New Tacoma Cemetery because that is where their infant son is buried. Mom and Dad went out and bought a double crypt and set up a time for a funeral director to come over to the house that night to set up the arrangements. By 1990, my siblings had moved on from employment at the office. He told me that he and Mom invited each of us kids to come over if we wanted to participate.
As we were leaving the office for the evening, Dad said that he felt good knowing that I would be there that night. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I hoped to skip going over that evening. Instead, I told him I would be there.
I cried when I left home that night. Though I knew intellectually that Dad was mortal, I didn't want to believe that the end of his life was approaching. I also knew that I didn't want to plan for the inevitable when that meant that I had to give up what I wanted to believe. I needed to rise above that for Dad and Mom's sake.
For the most part, it wasn't as difficult as I imagined it would be. There may have been some small issues that needed decisions, but his funeral would be held at the cemetery chapel with a short ride in a hearse to the mausoleum.
The one point of contention that night was who would conduct the funeral. Both Dad and Mom were adamant that they did not want their funerals to be turned into evangelistic sermons like so many they had attended that were conducted by ministers. There were two obvious choices as ministers if they wanted a minister to conduct the funeral, but Dad was concerned that both of them would talk too much about death, God, and their personal relationships with Jesus, and too little about who he was.
The funeral director assured Dad that their slate of ministers always speak with the families of the deceased so that they can talk about who they were. He did not seem to understand that Dad was saying if having a minister conduct his funeral was his choice, he did not need the slate of ministers. I don't recall what the cost was to add the minister to the funeral plan was, but the funeral director kept pushing for the cost to be added to the plan. When he kept pushing the addition after Dad rejected it three or four times, I suggested that another option is for him and me to take the discussion outside, even though I don't truly know what the outcome would have been. As the professional that he was, though, he agreed to move on.
Dad did not move on, however. It was then that he said that if he had his choice of a person to conduct his funeral, that it would be me. I agreed to do it for free, and we then moved on without any other tough decisions.
Dad wanted his service to be simple, short, and about him and his life. I have no regrets for accepting the responsibility to conduct his funeral service, but I do have some regrets about how Mom and I interpreted what "no religion" meant to the actual conducting of his funeral. Those regrets aside, Dad's funeral service was so unique that others have told me that it influenced how they buried some of their loved ones. However, the pain of remembering the night we planned Dad's funeral still brings tears to my eyes.
I am now nearly five years older than Dad was when he died. Whatever else is on my agenda in life, it all comes to an end when I die. I see the same pain in Candace and Erin's eyes when I tell them we need to talk about things so that they can be planned. Even though I recognize the pain in their eyes as the same pain that I felt when I had to accept that my dad was mortal, I also know from Dad's point of view how important it is for them to help make the final arrangements for me while I am alive so that the arrangements that are inevitable don't become an emergency for them later.
