The Funeral Planner (33 page)

I address Uncle Sam in the Ziploc bag. “What would you do?” I wait a minute, and then nod. “Got it, thanks,” I say.

Two hours later, I’m standing at the bottom of Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena in hiking attire. I stare up at the Observatory Tower, 6,171 feet above me, and announce, “Well, as Uncle Sam would say, ‘Nothing like a good ascent to clear the cobwebs of the heart and mind.’” I take a deep breath and start climbing, focusing on one step at a time, forcing myself to hike at a slow pace so I can take in the scenery and foliage. That attempt soon fails as I find myself mumbling out loud and quickening my pace. “Go into the woods, he says. Go cold turkey on the
FSJ,
he says. Find yourself, he says. How do you find yourself ? After all, I am where I’m at. Right? And how do you deal with grief ? Just go be, he says. Doesn’t being still require doing? After all,
to be
is a verb that means some sort of action is taking place….”

When I finally look up I realize I’m more than halfway up the mountain.

“Okay, take this in, Maddy,” I tell myself. I scan the beautiful horizon and suck in the fresh mountain air. I’m about to continue when I hear a soft whimpering noise. I look around and under a cavelike rock formation is a skinny, mangy black puppy. The crying puppy awkwardly hops out from under the rock toward me.

“Oh my goodness,” I exclaim. “Are you all right, little one?”

The puppy leaps into my arms. Its paw is injured and bleeding. I wash the blood off with water and tie my bandana around the paw to protect it. I look at the puppy’s face.

“You are adorable. What am I going to do with you?” The puppy licks my face and a bond is sealed, forever, whether I want it to be or not. I look at the peak of the mountain approximately two thousand feet away and then at the puppy. “Well, this is a first. I’ve never abandoned a climb, but I’m certainly not going to abandon you, now, am I.”

And with that, I turn around with the injured puppy in my arms and begin my descent. What I am about to discover is something not even the best business plan in the world could have predicted.

For the next five days, my sole focus is the puppy. I scour the newspapers’ Lost and Found sections and place an ad in a dozen newspapers and on several Internet sites. I check with multiple dog pounds but there seems to be no owner in sight. I take the puppy to the vet and have her dewormed and defleaed.

The vet says, “She’s a healthy puppy, mostly Border collie with some Lab. She was smart to find you.”

I gladly pay for all the necessary shots and licenses and nurse the puppy back to health with the best puppy food my credit card can buy. I buy
Puppies for Dummies
and house-train her in one hour. She promptly pees on tabloid journals on my outside patio. Having her pee on the
FSJ
would be sacrilegious for me and is therefore simply not an option. I am impressed by her quick-study. I buy her toys and play with her while trying to think of a name, even if it’s temporary. And yet, I realize I’m falling in love and that this puppy isn’t going anywhere. At least that’s what I think until my land-lord tells me no pets are allowed in the building.

I fill Sierra in on all the details of the past week, including the puppy. “The puppy sounds adorable,” says Sierra. “But do you want to give her away?”

I look at the black puppy rolling on her back with her head upside down, paws in the air, whimpering ever so slightly and staring at me.

“I can’t. She’s too cute. I’m puppy-whipped. You should see her right now, on her back with her paws in the air, pulling a Lassie and…”

“Is that all it takes to turn you into mush?” chuckles Sierra. “Look, there’s a real easy solution here. Give up the apartment and move into Uncle Sam’s cottage for a while, until you find yourself. If you get lost, call me. I’ll come over and tell you where you are.”

I can just see Sierra smiling on the other end of the line.

Once I make the decision, everything becomes quite easy. I give notice on my apartment lease. Eve helps me sell all of my possessions except for one duffel bag of clothes and one duffel bag of important paperwork. Then I take the puppy with me on my friend the red-eye to Michigan.

My father picks us up at the airport. Charlie gives me a big hug. “Welcome home, honey.” He quickly loads my two duffel bags inside the car, then stands back and gives us the once-over. “You look good. Lighter, Maddy. And that puppy’s a cutie-pie. What’s her name?”

“I finally came up with the name on the plane,” I say. “At first, I was going to call her Hepburn because inside the house she’s like Audrey and outside she’s like Katharine. But I finally settled on Siddhartha—Sid for short.”

Charlie smiles. “Is that because you two are on a journey to find Buddha together?”

“I don’t know about finding Buddha, Dad, but we’re definitely on a journey together. What we’ll find, I have no idea.”

“Oh, almost forgot,” he says. He reaches inside the car and pulls out a
Financial Street Journal.
“I brought you the paper.”

As he starts to hand it over to me, I leap backward, waving my hands in the air, and immediately shut my eyes, as if the paper has cooties. “Ohmigod! Please keep that away from me. In fact, throw it away. Please! I’m trying to kick the habit.”

Charlie cocks his head and then tosses the paper in a garbage can. “Okay,” he says. “This is a first. Shall we go?”

We pile into the car and leave the airport.

I calm down as Siddhartha squirms a little in my lap. “So, how is everyone?”

“Everyone’s fine. Your mother is telling stories at all the local schools and libraries now. Daniel still lives with us. He and Rebecca are still in limbo. Andy seems to be okay. Keating is getting bigger and bigger, and I convinced Daniel to get a teaching degree.”

“Is he doing it?”

“Reluctantly. Oh, before I forget, I turned the electricity and water back on at Uncle Sam’s cottage and had his car tuned up, so you’ll have your own transportation.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I say as Siddhartha settles calmly into my lap now.

“I haven’t cleaned out his place completely. I gave his clothes to Goodwill. That’s all I’ve managed to do for now.”

When we reach Jackson, Charlie helps me get settled into Uncle Sam’s cottage on Clark Lake. We watch as Siddhartha frolicks in the water. She runs endlessly back and forth between the water’s edge and me, goading me into a game of tag.

“This is another first, someone with more energy than you,” says Charlie. “When you get your bearings, let me know and Mom and I will drive out here and take you to dinner, okay, hon?”

“Thanks again, Dad. I really appreciate it. But Sid and I are going to hole up for a while, so don’t expect to hear from me right away. Okay?”

“Take all the time you need.” He gives me a hug, gets in the car and drives away.

While Siddhartha cocks her head and lifts her ears to contemplate the difference between butterflies and ladybugs, I wander around Uncle Sam’s cottage, lightly touching the artifacts in the house and studying the books that line every wall. A faded red hardcover catches my eye. I pull it down off the shelf. It’s a book on rituals published in 1932. I take the book with me to the outside deck and plop into a chaise longue. Under a warm sun, I leaf through the book’s pages while keeping an eye on Sid.

The book identifies all kinds of rituals from the ordinary to the extraordinary, citing examples as involuntary as breathing or experiencing nature, to the more voluntary kind like creating a sacred space or private garden, making tea and conversation, to bathing, walking, writing, cooking, doing a chore, giving a gift and even making love. The book also lists the act of storytelling and honoring the past as rituals. There is a separate chapter on rituals as rites of passage that include religious confirmations such as bar mitzvahs, and the staples of birth, graduation, marriage, anniversaries and death.

The author points out a crucial common theme among all cultures—
“the need to create tradition and practice it over and over again…so that ritual is a reinforcement of memory, the memory of knowing who you are.”

I close the book. “Okay, so if I repeat a custom, I’ll know who I am. But what is the definition of
custom?
” I look up. Siddhartha is gone. I leap up and wander the property calling out her name. I pass a faded white sailboat lying between the shed and the dock. Siddhartha’s black head pops up from inside the boat. Curiosity and mischief shine in her eyes. I smile, relieved. The boat elicits a flash from my past. I lick a finger and hold it in the air, testing the wind like I did as a kid. I nod to myself, and then clap my hands. “Come on, Siddhartha! We’re going sailing!”

Siddhartha practices walking the length of the boat while I clean it out, checking to make sure the mainsail and the rudder still work and that there is no damage to the hull. I change into my one-piece swimmer’s suit, pack a lunch for Sid and me, include an emergency kit, life preserver, tackle box and fishing rod, and set sail. Siddhartha stands perched at the helm excitedly taking in the experience for the first time, while I take in the process of renewal.

The little Sunfish does well as we explore Clark Lake. I teach Siddhartha how to sail, explaining my actions and stressing the importance of safety. She stares at me and wags her tail.
What a good listener,
I think.

“Did you know that the Sunfish boat is the most widely sold sailboat in America?” I ask rhetorically. Siddhartha suddenly turns around, giving me her rear view while propping her front paws on the bow. “Sid, are you listening? This is important information,” I say. Siddhartha growls. I spot the log in front of us and steer the boat in the opposite direction. “Good going, Sid. You’re right. That was more important than knowing the market value of a Sunfish.”

We sail back to shore and I tie the boat up to the dock. Siddhartha leaps to solid ground. I pluck a daisy and place it on the bow of the boat, repeating the tradition from childhood. Placing my hands together in prayer, I say out loud, “Thank you, Sunfish, for showing us an afternoon filled with nature and for bringing us home safely.”

That evening, I make a fire in the living room’s stone fireplace. Siddhartha sleeps on the floor near my feet. I lounge on big floor cushions staring at the fire, thinking about the demise of Uncle Sam, Tara, Smitty, Mr. Haggerty, and even Lights Out. I start journaling the thoughts that roll through my head, writing down my memories of each one of them. I write for hours and hours until the fire burns out and I crash on the cushion with Siddhartha at my side.

The next day, I head to the local market to stock up on groceries and canned foods. I return to the cottage and fill up all the cabinets. I take the overflow of canned goods into the basement where Uncle Sam kept a storage bin of food and batteries in case of a tornado. I’m loading the bin when there’s a sudden loud commotion followed by Siddhartha’s whimpering. I drop the canned soup in my hand and run to the other side of the basement. I find Sid awkwardly trying to pull herself out from among piles of fallen debris from an old, unstable cabinet that she had obviously tampered with.

I take her in my arms to make sure she’s okay. She licks my face to say thanks. “What are you attempting to excavate, huh? Silly thing, you.”

I let her go. She scrambles away, continuing her archaeological rounds. I stand to dust myself off when Siddhartha prances back into view proudly carrying a tall, felt top hat in her mouth with the name
Stansbury
sewed on it. My mouth drops. “You found my hats!”

In silhouette against a setting sun, Siddhartha and I walk along the water’s edge. I wear the felt top hat and perform an odd combination of skips and hops for Siddhartha, who watches, bemused.

I match disjointed dancing with equally disjointed lyrics I created twenty-five years ago:
“Oh, Stansbury! I’m struttin’ down the street! Feeling you with my feet! Oh, Stansbury, you got the beat! Of hometown love! Praise Stansbury forever!”

Siddhartha jumps up on me, excited to join in. I hold her front paws in my hands as we pivot together. “Okay, so I’m not a lyricist like Tara, or a singer. Sorry, Sid.” And I sing a reprise off-key again.

One day, I take Siddhartha on a walk along the outskirts of town. A row of newspaper machines startle me. I feel a compulsion to look, as if the
Financial Street Journal
s inside were beckoning. I backpedal, trying to control the urge to buy one. But then I shift directions and sneak toward the row of papers, peeking at the headlines, confusing Siddhartha as she unwillingly performs yet another about face. I back up again, feeling an urge to sink my teeth into the meat of a front-page article. I take a deep breath and with all my might, pull away from temptation once and for all. Siddhartha faithfully trails behind me. As Sid and I round a corner, I come face-to-face with the local bowling alley. I stop, stare through its large plate-glass window and wonder.

My routine provides continuity. Long morning walks in the woods with Siddhartha, followed by intensive dog-obedience training, bowling practice, cleaning up the cottage, documenting Uncle Sam’s fishing lure collection, sailing in the afternoon with Siddhartha, fishing off the dock for dinner with Sid, and if that fails, heading to the cupboards for refueling. In the evenings, I follow all that up with readings from the works in the many bookcases, and writing in my own journal by the fireplace while Siddhartha sleeps.