lucyoncolorado

In which we attend R's dad's wake...

R and I drive a white van up a treeless green hill with mountains in distance. We arrive at a Swiss chalet style building with a large parking lot. A man in a suit greets us and takes us into a foyer where a clerk behind a counter has us sign a registry. She asks us some questions and places a neon green visitor's sticker on our shirts.

We walk down the hall towards a glass partition with a sliding door that leads out to a terrace. Outside, there are several raised rectangular platforms, and R's dad's shrouded body rests on one of them. There are no benches or chairs. We see V sitting on the ground beside their dad's body. Their dad is also there. He's healthy. He's wearing his glasses and a green and brown woolen sweater with his collar cuffed neatly over the neckline. He smiles at us and waves us over. We sit next to V but their dad continues to stand. All four of us look at the shrouded body.

More people arrive. People walk around and chat with each other. I don't know most of the people. After some time, I exit the terrace through the glass wall and walk back down the foyer. I run into a blonde man who knows me but I don't know him. He is just finishing with the clerk and placing his visitor's sticker on his shirt.

He greets me and asks about the wake. I tell him that everything is very peaceful and that R's dad is also there. He tells me that this happens sometimes, that some people believe if you attend your own wake, you must be a ghost, but he's not sure what he believes. This surprises me since I had not thought about R's dad being a ghost. I tell him that I am surprised by this though it makes sense. He says that it might not be true, no one knows for sure. He asks me what R or V thought about it, and I realized I didn't mention it to them.