The Deal

We had a deal, Ada and me. We decided that, since neither of us expected to live forever or get out of this existence alive, which ever one didn't die first would spend the funeral of the one who made it out first telling bad jokes.

  This wasn't going to win either of us any friends among the family or gathered mourners but we didn't care. In our rather humble opinions people took death far, far too seriously anyway.

  As I told Ada many times, “having been dead once, the whole experience is highly overrated.” And she agreed, having been dead once before herself.

  There were no bright lights, no family waiting, nothing to make the entire experience one worth revisiting, but as death was as inevitable as taxes, we both realized that the next time would probably be the time we got our exit visas from this cycle of reality stamped, and soundly.

  Now, I feel I need to explain a couple of things before we go much further. Ada is, rather was, my grandmother. A “southern lady” of the old school, she could achieve more with a raised eyebrow than a raised voice. No one in the family wanted to see that look of disappointment on her lovely little face so we all strove to make life as easy on her as possible.

  Her husband, my late grandfather, had been saddled by his parents with the name William Homer. He had once been a star athlete in high school and had won awards in every single sport offered in their little hometown. Baseball, football, basketball, you name it, he played it, he mastered it, he made it his own. And it didn't get any better when he became an adult. Just more intense.

  Homer had boxes of trophies in closets all over their house, racks of them displayed prominently by the most current achievements and their position of honor was ranked by the difficulty of the task. Any flat surface that would hold some shiny bit of bric-a-brac that had his name on it and some amazing feet of athletic achievement he had conquered was coated in a heavy furniture wax and summarily crowded in with the little men holding golf clubs, bowling balls, olive laurels or just simply their own hands over their heads.

  And Ada was in charge of maintaining this one man shrine. It was amazing how quickly it vanished after Homer died. We found cases and boxes of the stuff in dark corners of the basement after her death and it's amazing, but, no one wants the trophies of a dead guy that they didn't know…not even the folks that gave them to him in the first place .

  Homer was also one of the most uptight men I have ever had the pleasure to have known. For some reason that I still do not understand he was almost physically incapable of expressing any emotions aside from scorn, derision, and disdain. We were all, to a soul, a disappointment to him in one way or another.

  My mother was a disappointment because she had been born female and was overweight. She was, and still is, one of the most brilliant minds I know, but she was chubby and he feared that she would never amount to much. His manner of showing his love was to send her to secretarial school so she would at least “have a career.”

  My aunt Reesa , ten years my mothers junior, disappointed him because she dropped out of college from suffering an almost traumatic case of “too much fun, not enough grades,” and ended up a secretary herself. She married a man who, while he liked to drink in much the same way that the Celts were said to like to acquire real estate that wasn't theirs, treated her moderately well and only fathered two children on her. We won't discuss these as they aren't germane to the current situation, however. We can trash them at a later date.

  At the time that the agreement was made I was in my early thirties, which would have put Ada in her mid-sixties, and one of those brave little ladies you see who has been widowed and remarried and close to becoming a widow for the second time.

  We were having coffee one morning while I was staying with her, being between wives, jobs, and places to live, and got caught up in the beauty of the way the day was developing in spite of itself. I think, personally, she had already been into the scotch, but I wouldn't swear to it. It seemed that she spent much of her later years mildly stewed and smiling like a cherub.

  You have to remember that these were simpler times, before everyone had internet access, PDA's, cell phones and too little time. Before the electronic idiot box became the blind ruler of so many households, so we talked. That old, charming manner of communication that seems to be lost so easily these days as the media and society slowly walls all of us off into little isolated, insulated cocoons where we wrap layer upon layer of Monday Night Football, bad situation comedies, and “reality television” programming around our minds like so much cotton batting to keep out the cold, stark realities we don't want to deal with.

  I had already had a few warning twinges from my chest, warnings that I chose to ignore because I didn't see life as all that important a pastime, so we were of a mind that which ever one of us died first, the survivor would become a pain in the neck to the rest of the family and keep alive a sense of that grand southern humor that seemed so sadly lacking in the collateral bloodlines.

  I remember clearly Ada sitting, looking out the window from her kitchen where the informal dining table was located, sipping her coffee and having the first of a long series of cigarettes of the day. I remember the soft sunlight as it reflected from her perfectly coifed silver hair, and I remember thinking to myself that if there were a Goddess, this must be what she looked like on her day off. Very calm, very relaxed, slightly bewildered at all the beauty and abundance around her, but in absolute command of every situation and the reality of her life.

  “You realize that I'm going to die before you do,” was her opening shot in the days discussions. “It's just a basic fact. I'm older, therefore, I get to leave first.” I told her that I thought that this was a rather selfish attitude and that I didn't think that age was justification for her crowding to the head of the line to escape.

  “You were always a rude and self-centered child,” she shot back. “I think I'll die first just to prove it can be done. That will serve you right, you will have to just wait your turn.” I harrumphed at her logic. She wasn't terribly impressed, but deigned to allow me to pour more coffee for her.

  I made my thoughts known on her comments and we decided to just watch the remainder of the morning unfold around us while she spiced her coffee and I rolled myself something to smoke. She was very tolerant of some of my habits as long as I wasn't too obvious. Besides, she said she liked the aroma of my “special blend tobacco.”

  As it turned out, Ada left first. I wasn't there for her as she passed, and from what my mother and aunt said, she was fine with that. Ada preferred I remember her as she was on that morning when we decided to annoy people.

  And I do.

  And I did.

  Her funeral was one of those southern epics where everyone and their dogs showed up at the little chapel to mourn her passing. I sat on the front row, mostly by myself, and made bad jokes all the way through the services. At her grave side I decided to go for the big kill and told all her favorite knock-knock jokes to my nephews, annoying my aunt and her husband who told me, point blank, never to talk to his sons again, and managed to have most of the audience moved away from me to a safer area.

  I was the last person to leave the grave side. I crumbled up one of my hand-rolled smokes, sprinkling it into the grave, and wished that I had a cup of her “spiced coffee” to add to it. Instead I just watched the robins and finches dart back and forth across the funeral park lawn, as Ada and I had watched possibly these very same birds on her back lawn, and allowed her to pass into the next great adventure, w