The Funeral They Said Was For Family

The Call From The Shed

I need to go back eleven days before he died, to the last Sunday call.

My father was in the care center by then, but an aide who had known him for years had slipped him a cell phone, the kind with large buttons. It was 2:15 on a Sunday, and I was in my kitchen in Peoria grading a stack of fractions quizzes, and the phone rang with a number I did not recognize, and I answered it, and it was him.

“Lynn.” His voice had a gravel in it like a shovel against a driveway. “Don’t hang up. I’ve only got a few minutes of the good kind of breath.”

“When I go, she’s going to plan the service. She’s going to write every word. And she’s going to keep you out.” He said it flat, like reading a feed price. “She’s told the nurses. She’s told the church. I have heard her through the wall.”

“Dad, I’ll talk to her.”

“No, you will not. Listen to me. If she stands in front of that chapel door and tells you it’s for family, you do not argue. You do not make a scene in front of people. You walk out to your car and you sit in it. You sit in it and you wait. Doyle will come find you.”

“Doyle?”

“I’ve given Doyle a job.” He coughed, and it went on a long time, and I held the phone and could not do anything about it. “And Marv has something of mine. I wrote it out by hand. Three pages. I’m giving it to him tomorrow, and he’s not to open it until I’m gone, and he’s not to skip it, no matter who asks.”

“What is it?”

“It’s mine,” my father said. “It’s what I should have said out loud a long time ago, and didn’t, and that’s on me. I’m sorry for that, Lynn. I’m sorry I let her. But I’m not going to leave this world without saying it where people can hear.”

“Saying what?”

He was quiet so long I thought the call had dropped.

“Who my family was,” he said. “Somebody ought to.”

Then the line clicked, and an aide’s voice said he needed to rest, and it was over. I stood in my kitchen holding a red pen. I thought it was the morphine. I honestly did. I thought a dying man had gotten sentimental and wanted to be dramatic about it, and I told myself I would humor him, and I wrote on a sticky note, SIT IN CAR, and stuck it on the refrigerator, and went back to my fractions.

I am not proud that I almost did not believe him.