Nice Man, Bad Wig

What a pleasant day.

Traficant, King of the Bad Wigs!

Although it is allegedly winter, the temperature in these parts was flirting with 70 today and it was lovely out. We were still basking in the warm afterglow of one Mr. Neal Rosen's 4.5 day visit with us over the last several days (he left on Tuesday). We also had the major portion of the latest swath of ruined flooring repaired early this morning and the guy did flat-out fantastic job. Since Dash has been borrowing my mountain bike to get to school everyday, I rolled up all my loose change and purchased a road bike so I can ride on the paved trails around here during the week. What more could make such a nice day even better?

Apparently, a visit to a funeral home. That, it would seem, is what passes for the cherry on top of the day's sundae for Karen and I.

And calling the visit we paid to the Hull's Chapel the highlight of the day isn't ironic. It more or less truly was. This has been the last bit of ugly business we'd been putting off since this whole mess started. I'd done a lot of preliminary calling and online researching several months ago and had more or less decided that Hull seemed like the right call. But we'd need to visit to know for sure and when Karen surprised us both by feeling fairly chipper this afternoon, we got in the car and drove right on over.

Behold an even less convincing toupee!

The funeral home is not all that far from the Walnut Creek BART (convenient for guests! and tons of parking, too!) in a part of town we rarely visit. Karen was concerned that we didn't have an appointment but I reasoned that while they probably don't get a lot of literal "walk in" business, we were unlikely to be the first surprise visitors.

Hull is a family run business, kind of like Six Feet Under but with sons that are nowhere near as dreamy as Michael C. Hall and Peter Krause. We met Mark Hull III and he was unfailingly warm and gracious and extremely patient and helpful. He was also possessed of a rather unconvincing toupee. He explained the whole process which was great since we haven't had to bury anyone legally before (the drifters in the crawlspace obviously do not count). We did our level best not to stare at the unsteady tilt of his wig as he spoke.

Sorry, Chuck. No one's buying it.

It's probably a little counter-intuitive to feel reassured by making plans for your spouse's/your own demise but that was the takeaway from our visit. If nothing else, just having an idea of how the whole thing works was comforting in a sideways kind of way. We just wish the place had wi-fi so that we can stream the eventual service for those that cannot manage to make the trip when the time comes. That said, I'm guessing one of our more technically savvy friends might be able to come up with a solution for us.

I've been trying to figure out why we actually enjoyed our visit and the best I've been able to come up with is this. Basically, this whole cancer thing is an unending series of terrible mysteries. You don't see what's killing you, you don't know when it's going to do something horrible to you like migrating to your brainmeat, you don't know if your treatments are working, you don't know anything. The one thing you do know--that there's going to be death--is still stuffed with uncertainty since you don't know when that little treat is going to happen. So something like this, something like planning a memorial service, something that is concrete and tangible and controllable...that gives you a small bit of certainty that at least one thing is going to go according to your wishes.

And that, I guess, is what passes for comfort right now.