A Pleasant Demise

Within weeks of her unexpected visit, their grandmother went to purchase her own coffin from Detweiler Funeral Parlor and her grandchildren learned that she enjoyed visiting the Pleasanton Cemetery to speak to the dead. Like most southerners their grandmother Margaret had fashioned a small and personal art form out of ancestor worship, and the authentic intimacy of cemeteries made her happy. She looked upon the prospect of death as a journey. The subject of her own death filled her with pleasant reveries of journeys both imminent and surprising .Margaret did not attend church regularly or openly profess a belief in God, because of this it gave her license to embrace a more exotic prescriptive of her spirituality. She maintained an innocent trust in horoscopes and planned her days around the proud alignment of stars. With careless curiosity she sought the advice of fortune tellers, and believed in the shining power of crystal balls. A gypsy in Visalia had read Margaret’s palm and made a prediction that Margaret would not live past her sixty-fifth birthday. Margaret had just turned sixty-two when she came back to Pleasanton to make peace with her son and three grandchildren that she had abandoned for so many years. But she took the gypsy’s death sentence with a stoical and bemused gravity, and began to prepare for her own demise as thought it were a voyage to a fabulous country whose borders had been long closed to tourists. When it came to purchase her casket and to make final arrangements of her internment she insisted that her grandchildren accompany her. Always the teacher Margaret wanted to teach her grandchildren not to fear death. She spoke about the impending purchase of her coffin with gaiety and acted as though she were ab...

... middle of paper ...

...solute silence in the room before Francis screamed and bolted to the door. They heard her footsteps taking the stairs three steps at a time. Margaret hopped nimbly out of the casket, slipped her shoes back on her feet, and with a sly smile she whispered, “I know the back way out.” The three children followed their grandmother down a narrow set of back stairs and through the small bricked in garden at the back of the mortuary. When they were safely out of view the four threw themselves down onto a patch of grass and screamed with laughter, until their stomachs ached. Harrison and Clara rolled into each other’s arms trying to stifle their laughter, but still they shook with uncontrollable hysteria. Julian shook like a wet puppy on the ground. Then they regrouped arm in arm, made their way back down Gray Street, letting Mr. Adams signal them across the street once more.