Assumptions. Don’t Bury Me in a Dress.

My mom died when I was twelve and a half.

The half was important to me, because I was really closer to thirteen than twelve. Thirteen was a milestone, I was going to be a “teen”, a new chapter, something magically different, and she wasn’t there to see it. I’m sure she planned to be, but she died unexpectedly.

I mean, is any death really “expected”?

My mom didn’t own any dresses. She owned pants, shorts, “slacks”, but no dresses, no skirts, nothing frilly, lacy, or frou-frou. I’m the same way. I currently own one dress, reserved for weddings and funerals. It’s just not my comfort zone.

The day after she died, my dad took me to the funeral home along with my grandmother. My parents had been divorced for over five years at that point, but I still thought my dad knew my mom better than I did. I thought her own mother knew her better than I did.

I assumed they knew best.

We picked out a casket, I don’t even remember what it looked like. Then the funeral director led me to a rack of clothes and asked me to pick something out. I was told I had to pick something out for her to wear.

What?

Hanging on the rack were some suits for men, and three dresses for women. The dresses consisted of two cream-colored, frilly, wedding-dress looking things, and a hideous baby blue one a little less frilly than the other two. All the clothes had strangely large openings in the back, which didn’t make sense at the time.

When I say my mom wouldn’t be caught dead in any of those clothes, I mean it. But unfortunately she was.

I looked the dresses over, pulling one polyester thing out after the other, then back again, and I asked, “This is it?”

I was thinking, Do I really have to pick one of these? Are there no other options here? This is bad. This is not my mom.

At the time, I had no idea a person could be buried in whatever they wanted. I didn’t know the protocol, it was my first funeral-planning ordeal.

I looked to my grandmother, who was beside herself in grief, but even so, she had to know none of these hideous dresses were anything my mom would want to wear, right?

My brain buzzed with a surreal wrongness I had never experienced before. A dream-like state where all I wanted to do was wake up and go back to my life as it was two days before. I didn’t like living in this reality, I didn’t know how. I was unmoored and floating with no direction, no compass.

I looked at my dad, who I assumed would know what to do. He knew the owners of the funeral home on a first name basis, couldn’t he make an exception here?

I was hesitating, going back and forth, looking at each bad choice again and again. I shrugged my shoulders. My dad was waiting on me to choose, and if he was telling me that I had to pick one of these dresses, then that must be the only option available.

Can’t we go get her own clothes? I wanted to ask that question, but the words wouldn’t form outside of my brain. I think I said something again like, “Is this it?”

The funeral director was standing off to the side, patiently waiting, with respectful silence. I remember price tags on the dresses in the hundreds of dollars. Criminal, honestly.

I reluctantly chose the baby blue one. It was awful, but not as horrendous as the others. It was long, with long sleeves, ruffles at the wrists, and a pleated front. It had less lace than the other options. But again, still nothing my mom would ever, ever own or wear, probably not even if someone paid her to.

Years later I found out that a person can be buried in whatever they want, I think I saw it in a movie. Normally the family brings in an outfit, and the funeral home puts it on them. I’m sure it’s not as convenient when the family provides the clothes, and certainly not as lucrative.

Assumptions.

My assumption as a child was that the adults in the room would know what to do.
My assumption was that others would stand up for my mom, know her likes and dislikes, and respect who she was.

I waited for it to happen that day but it never did.

The feeling I had in that room haunts me. The fact that I didn’t speak up, didn’t defend her and state what she liked, what she hated. That I didn’t just state the obvious.

It was so obvious.

I assumed since no one was offering any other options, there must not be any available.

I realized years later it was simply because no one wanted to do the hard thing.

Later, when I knew the truth- that, nooooo, the funeral home doesn’t require you to purchase and wear special “funeral clothes” when you die, I asked my Dad about it.

“Why did we bury Mom in a dress? I never saw her in a dress, she didn’t even own one.”

“No, I don’t think I ever saw her wear one either.”

“So, why didn’t we bury her in her own clothes?”

“Well, we would have had to go over to the house, find something in her closet for her to wear, bring it back to the funeral home, and make sure they had it in time for the service the next day, and we didn’t have time for all that.”

Seriously. It wasn’t that it couldn’t have been done, it was simply not the easy thing to do. It might have inconvenienced someone who had to drive 20 minutes across town. It might have inconvenienced the funeral home a little bit.

Yep. That was the truth of it.

It’s always easier not to do the hard thing.

It’s always easier to assume other people know more than you do.

It’s always easier to not fight for things.

It’s always easier to take the easy way out.

Sometimes in life we need to do the hard things.

Oh, and by the way, don’t bury me in a dress.