No post I’ve ever written has had the staying power of Dressing the Dead, first published nine years ago at Times and Seasons. People tell me that they find it just in time, or hunt it up to reread when they need it. Keepa’ninny “S” wrote this poem about her experience with dressing her grandmother. First the poem, followed by some paragraphs reflecting in prose about the same experience. — Ardis

Dressing the Dead
(My Baptist Grandmother, at the LDS Mortuary, which she had picked)

By “S”

First: we were afraid.
Well, I was sort of afraid,
but Sister was also involved,
and you know how sometimes when you are afraid
you procrastinate?

We were an hour late.

Next.
The Mortician
began hemming and hawing,
a prepared, awkward speech–
I interrupted him.
We have never done this before
and we would love help.
(Thank you, Ardis
for the blog entry
to prepare me to say that–)
You should have seen the look of relief on his face.

Then?
Yes, the body–
her and yet not her–
and yet…
I have been to so many funerals
and seen the half-closed coffin–
where were the feet– on all those people?
My brain knows
but my heart didn’t
You may think it strange– I do–
but I found it healing
to be able to see her legs,
her feet

But to continue: the dress
She made it herself
for my brother’s wedding: blue turquoise lace
(lace dresses are in, btw)
(not that she knew that– as far as I know)

The mortician offered
to cut it up the back–
for ease of slipping on.
Sister and I glanced at each other uneasily.
She said what I was thinking:
Get up on Resurrection Morning with your clothes flapping at the back?
Could we try something else?
And it turned out that all those years
of my trying to learn how to sew
came in handy.

It turned out
that Grandmother’s burial dress
which she had made herself
had a too-long zipper.
Much too long. Probably she got it on sale
but at any rate,
she had inserted it
and sewn over a reasonable spot for closure
and left the rest be basted in

So there I stood,
strange mortician’s scissors in my hands,
(hurrying because, after all, we had been an hour late)
unpicking stitches
pulling threads
feeling a bit triumphant
at this connection
between my can-do Grandmother
and myself.

We dressed her.
A bit like a reluctant toddler
in a way
but not worse
but the feeling of love in the room was strong
We tugged her sleeves up her arms
zipped the dress up the back
arranged it as best we could.

Sister did her makeup–
used what Uncle had found in her purse
We put the crystal beads on her
someone came later
and tacked them into place
(two small stitches)
on her dress

Sister wept
I gave her her space
I sometimes–
Grandmother–
we are both good people
sometimes we just miss each other.

I loved Rose Shuffleburger
She could see the difficulties
(AND she loved my grandmother)
She asked me to see
So for her sake I try
I wish family weren’t so difficult.

Shoes?
Mom did not pack shoes
in the brown paper bag
with the clothes.

She said
she figured
Grandmother would not need them.
We figured
she was right.

Sister pointed out:
what lovely feet!
And they look like yours
and they did
Which pleased me more than it should have
how beautiful upon the mountains, I suppose I should say.

The children came.

Sister has eight
seven at the time
They all came in
Sister said: do you want to touch?
Some did
some were too afraid
Sister said
it was scary to think about but not to do
and that was true
of the whole experience.

.

My grandmother died in November of 2014– I’d have to check my journal to remember the exact date. We knew she was dying, and I certainly didn’t have enough time to take off of work for both being there as she died and for her funeral– so I went to be there when she died. (None of us realized before this happened that California has a law that there must be five days between a death and a burial. It sort of makes sense in terms of having time for suspicions of foul play to come up, but it also meant that almost all of us were there for her death, but mostly the locals were there for the funeral.) At any rate, I knew as soon as she was gone that I wanted to dress her, and doing so did indeed provide me with a sense of closure and healing, and made me feel better about having to miss the funeral. I asked my mother about dressing Grandma; she was fine with my doing it but didn’t want to participate, herself. I also asked each of my four sisters if they would care to join me. One of them said she felt she should, and she did. Afterward, she was glad she had. The others chose not to. We also offered for my one girl cousin to help, but she declined as well. This girl cousin provided the eulogy at the funeral; two of my sisters, along with me, stayed at the hospital all night the night Grandma died (remarkably similar to waiting for a birth to happen, IMHO). I guess what I’m saying is, I think we all did our part; I want to make it clear that I didn’t feel like anyone was shirking.

I did wish, however, that I had shared that “dressing the dead” post you had posted with my entire family at the time it came out, like I had wanted to, instead of chickening out because I thought they would think it was creepy. I think you posted it– we would have to check the archives– but it was in a timely manner, such that they would have all had time to get used to the idea, if they were ever going to, before the specific situation came up. I do not feel like anyone shirked, but I do feel like it was such an amazing, uplifting experience that I would actually be pleased at the chance to do it again. Something that my sister kept saying over and over, quoting Martha Ballard (I think) was that it was the last office of a friend. I think that she was saying this, at first, to psych herself up, but I also think that we were discovering, together, what a true act of friendship it really was. Perhaps I should apologize for bringing up a fantasy novelist in this context, but Terry Pratchett’s Discworld witches are basically Relief Society Presidents, and he has at least one brief but beautiful description of a woman laying out her friend for burial, in one of the Tiffany Aching books, if I recall. My sister brought that up as well, and I agreed with her that this was one of the many ways in which his writing rang true to life.

Another thing I realized after I had done it is that dressing the dead is a conversational topic which the general public is either fine with or else really creeped out by. There does not appear to be a lot of middle ground. The ones who were fine with it and were open to my saying what a wonderful experience it was (and it was, no exaggeration, the highlight of the entire trip– which is why I kept bringing it up!) tended to be the ones whose mothers had done it or, in one case (my Pakistani dentist), whose husband had done it for his father.

Grandma was kind of funny about Mormons. Grandma was Baptist, and remained Baptist to the end– but. I’ve heard her sharp tongue used to defend both the Book of Mormon and Church leadership, and once when I was visiting and we got some Jehovah’s witnesses at the door, she told me I should go out and straighten them out about what the atonement was about. (I declined, citing an unwillingness to contend, but allowed myself to feel quietly amused that she felt I was doctrinally sound enough, as it were, for a job like that.) And then there was the fact that she picked an LDS mortuary, which we, her Mormon grandchildren, found a bit bemusing, and at the same time, I think it was enormously comforting for me and my sister to have someone from our “tribe”– someone who understood our religious culture and beliefs– to deal with as we were stumbling our way through the remarkable experience of giving this act of service. Mom has done most of her temple work by now, but is waiting until all of her children can be in the same temple at the same time to be sealed to her parents– which will probably be this upcoming August or so.

Oh. I should probably mention that, right as we were leaving the mortuary, the mortician said, “You guys are AWESOME!” I seriously doubt that would have happened without the mental preparation you had provided through your writing.