Ghost of Honor

Pop always said he wanted a brass-band farewell with a beer chaser, but the good citizens of Caddo
Gap had more traditional tastes in their entertainment. The Reverend Smith, as unimaginative as his name,
caved in to congregational demand.
Rebella West gushed the official verdict: "Don't he look natural?"
Natural, I supposed, was as apt a tribute as any – Pop would just naturally sleep through any
sermon. This time, though, he wouldn't be surfacing at regular intervals to mutter, "That's a good place to
stop."
My sister's expression read, "That wax dummy? Balderdash! Pop wouldn't be caught dead in
church!"
And she was right. The shell was there, but The Presence wasn't having any. Nobody pronounced
Pop's condition "dead," of course. Like "sex," the word didn't translate into Fundamentalese We had to go
along with "passed away.”
My brother picked up on that one. "Away? Where? "Where did he go?"
"Where'd he go?" David's words echoed. "Not anywhere around this company," I could have told
him, tuning my mind into other distractions. I don't do grief — would as soon wet my pants as my cheeks
in public — so concentrated on the huge purpleness of Triva Horn for a while. Then I contemplated the
missing tassel on the altar cloth, long since gone-to-Jesus. But the over-head lights kept blinking me back
to the main event, the Reverend Smith's elevation of Pop in the direction of sainthood.
It's not that I had any quarrel with the mourners, professional and otherwise. They were there
willingly. Reverently. Even the soloist wasn't charging anything for her performance, and she was worth
it, too. I would happily have tolerated all present in their communion with The Father if they'd only
indulge me in a one-on-one with my own. But I was a captive audience in their territory — a stranger. So
was Pop, judging by the Reverend's assessment of his character and sentiments. Smith's eulogy was one
of those one-size-fits-all departures from ... well, departures.
"Hardly the Rev's fault," I reminded myself. "How could he know? Pop didn't exactly haunt the
holy precincts."
Not before today, he hadn't! The lights kept blinking (ship-to-shore code?), forcing my eyes
heavenward in the approved position. No, the lighting wasn't fluorescent. And surely the architects would
have drawn the line at neon.
I never did figure out who was calling the ritual signals, either. No sooner would I arrange my butt
center-cushion on the pew when one holy cheer-leader or another would hallelujah a padding shift,
dumping me bare-board-between. It was like fighting a restless sleeping partner for the blanket (or in this
case, the mattress).
For an official moment of silence, I was permitted to drift off into daydream, only to be bellowed
back from the pulpit and subsequently risen like something at Easter by a gorgon on my religious right
armed with an open hymn book. Joining the heavenly chorus with all the enthusiasm in my half-octave
range, I gave of my talents to the Lord, counting on His divine forgiveness. Halfway collapsed after verse
two thousand of Amazing Grace, I was guided to pew-basement level, landing on a kneeling apparatus
somebody salvaged from the Spanish Inquisition. Obediently, we mumbled the appropriate pledge to lead
"godly, righteous and sober lives," even as we licked our lips in anticipation of an alcoholic hereafter.
After all that action, the sermon was downright restful. The first half-hour of it, anyway. Fifteen minutes
worth of cliches later, I found myself envying Pop.
"Why hadn't we simply put up a rent-a-tent and done our own ceremony?" I wondered. "We could
have taken turns reading The Gospel According to Marks in its original manuscript. I would have led off
with my own beginning, and Pop's seafaring version of it:

New Ship Arrives in Port
The latest addition to the Marks Line, a daughter, arrived ballast and bilge-free, and is
being fitted for sails by the distaff crew. Guided into port by Medical Officer MacDonald,
she will remain in dry-dock until proven sea-worthy. Once launched, she will take her place
amongst the tankers, tugs and two-masters already in service.

I suppose I'd have to leave out Pop's concluding sentence with its prediction that I was likely to "follow
precedent and become a tramp," but the rest of the recipe was tasteful enough, given just that dash of the Old
Salt to give it flavor.
Mother could have followed with the romantic part of their story, published some years ago in
The Milwaukee Journal's Green Sheet. "They met at noon, he proposed at two, they were married at four," ran the
headline. Their get-together at the train station in Helena, Montana was the culmination of a year's
correspondence, initiated by Pop's sister who, after meeting Mom remarked, "You're crazy enough to belong
to my family." Handing her a picture of her three brothers, Aunt Fern challenged Mother to "Take your pick."
"I'll take the one in the middle," Mom decided, and wrote him a letter, photograph enclosed.
"It wouldn't have taken all that long to get around to the ceremony," Pop reminded me, "but we wanted
the postmaster for Best Man, and he couldn't get off till four.
Four ... I looked at my watch. Four o'clock hello; four o'clock good-bye.
"Fore-taste of heaven. "Called for. . . Hungered for . . . Not lost, nor gone before," Reverend Smith
intoned.
The lights blinked.
“A devout man. A pious man. A true Christian . . .”
The lights positively stuttered!
Somebody giggled. I tried to turn it into a cough.
Judy begged a Kleenex, covering her quivering lips permitting the shaking of her shoulders to register
as grief.
This time, it was more of a wink than a blink. A blessing, perhaps?
I said, "Good-bye, Pop," as they bore his flag-draped casket up the aisle, and thanked him for
preserving my dignity. What matter if I were crazy, or seeing ghosts, or ducking reality? He was with me,
comforting me. Making me laugh to the very end.
As we walked out of the chapel, Judy grabbed my arm for support, then grinned up at me through her
tears. "Did you see what Pop did?" she asked. "Wasn't that just like him?"