A Funeral, from the Book of Misunderstandings
The day was a perfectly gloomy November Saturday, dark, damp, and chilly. Vogel, a professor of music who had lived alone since his long-ago divorce, dreaded the prospect before him but dutifully took the Brooks Brother bag out of his closet and extracted the navy-blue suit in which he had been married. It still fit and did service for weddings and funerals. He no longer thought of the irony that the rituals of joy and grief should call for the identical uniform. He did reflect that, over the decades, funerals had come to outnumber weddings.
Dean’s only one letter away from dead. That’s what Vogel had replied when asked if he’d be a candidate the last time the job opened. Now the man who took on the position had died, and Vogel recalled his glib crack with some shame. A heart attack took the dean on Wednesday night. Friday brought an obituary in the University’s daily with all the conventional commendations, chiefly from other deans, plus the Provost and President, but only a couple from faculty, and none at all from students. To Vogel, all administrators were guilty until proven innocent. He pretended not to have received the mass email asking him to eulogize the dean, a decent teacher of viola who had, in his view, gone over to the Dark Side. He and the deceased were not what could be called simpatico. Early on, they had argued about a new hire which rather iced their relationship. Their last conversation had been at the annual alumni reception. Vogel had talked, ostensibly with good humor, about the importance of administrators. The dean had just delivered a self-congratulatory speech larded with what he called “metrics”: money raised, buildings refurbished, rankings elevated. Administrators love numbers. Metrics was almost the dean’s favorite word. Vogel had once joked to a colleague that perhaps he would begin filing his annual reports in iambic tetrameter. After the speech, Vogel and the dean found themselves together near the bar. Vogel was starting on a second gin-and-tonic and, provoked by the dean’s address, observed that the height of their office’s ceilings and salaries were compensation for the knowledge that, though they believed themselves to be proprietors, administrators were, in fact, parasites. The dean affected to chuckle, but it was clear he was offended.
“Oh, come now. Really? Parasites?”
“Useful ones but, yes, parasites. And I can prove it.”
The dean grimaced, looked longingly across the room, then snarled. “Okay, prove it.”
“Well, it’s simple. Imagine there are administrators like you but no faculty like me — and no students. Would the place still be a university?”
The dean frowned and emitted something between a chortle and a growl. Vogel pressed on.
“Now suppose there are faculty and students but no administrators. Of course, the place would be a shambles, a chaos. But it would still be a university, wouldn’t it?”
They both laughed, not at all convivially, and the dean excused himself. Now that the dean had suddenly died, Vogel felt regret at the memory. It was one of the reasons he felt obliged to attend the dean’s funeral and, if it couldn’t be avoided, say something appropriate to his widow and children — he thought there might be two of the latter. He knew he had to pay his respects; moreover, he knew he ought to be seen paying them.
The funeral was at the Presbyterian church, 2 p.m., reception to follow. Vogel, not a churchgoer, looked up the directions on Google maps. A lifelong fear of being late for a class or a concert had made Vogel almost pathologically punctual. The drive took less time than Google estimated, and he arrived at 1:35.
The stone church was square, solid, plain, and bluff, with red double doors. Its musty smell took Vogel back to the Sunday mornings of his childhood when the prayers were tedious, and even the shorter sermons felt interminable. He had yearned to be outside, beyond the stained glass, on his bike, playing ball. But he had liked the music, and saw that the church had a small loft that was filled by an electronic organ with no room for a choir. He also spied an old spinet in a corner to the left of the pulpit.
About fifteen people were already there. A few were seated but most were clumped at. the front, chatting in subdued voices. He recognized no one. He had met the dean’s wife only once. She was, he thought, an anesthesiologist or pediatrician, and didn’t attend academic events. If she and the dean gave dinner parties, he wouldn’t have been invited. If he had ever seen the dean’s children — two? three? — it would have been long before they grew up. Would the provost or president attend? It was possible, but Vogel doubted it.
More mourners arrived, the men dressed as he was; the women wore hats and dark dresses. He didn’t spot any of his colleagues. Who were these people?
An expensive casket, dark wood, highly polished, with bright brass fittings, was set up below the pulpit. It was open, but nobody went near it.
Vogel had a sudden misgiving. He took out and unfolded the notepaper on which he’d written the directions. Presbyterian Church, 2 p.m. He’d assumed there was only one Presbyterian Church, the First. He picked up a hymnal, looked inside the cover. Property of Second Presbyterian Church.
At that moment, a woman at the front of the church turned and stared at Vogel. Then she ran up the aisle, already in tears.
“You came!” she cried, seizing the hand without the hymnal.
Two more people, a young man and a young woman, made their way up the aisle.
The woman, still clasping Vogel’s hand was clearly moved and she spoke rapidly.
“It was the last thing he said, his dying words, that he wanted to make it up with you, that he had to apologize for his bullying, for cheating you over the business, for shutting you out, for being such a bad brother. You got my letter? I wasn’t sure of the address and, when you didn’t answer or come to the hospital — ” Here, she paused and turned to the two others, evidently the children. Vogel tried to object but she went right on.
“It’s your Uncle Harold. He’s come!”
“There’s been a mistake,” Vogel started again; but the widow, threw her arms around him, said she understood why he had every right to ignore her letter, but it meant so much that he was here now. The children looked at Vogel intensely and smiled. They too were eager to talk.
“I’ve wondered about you my whole life,” said the young woman with real feeling. “The only picture we had was of Dad and you when you were kids.”
“You look a lot like him,” said the young man. “It’s really amazing you’re here. It means so much to Mom — to us, too.”
“He blamed himself terribly, especially toward the end,” the widow babbled. “It was prostate cancer, Harold, months of the most terrible pain, and, toward the end, when he was just skin and bones, all he talked about was you and wanting morphine. The physical suffering was awful, but his remorse was even worse. He loved you, Harold. He loved you and it was killing him that he couldn’t apologize, that he couldn’t see you and beg forgiveness and say goodbye.”
Vogel hesitated. Such intense relief beside such pain was stunning. He made a decision that surprised him. He decided to say nothing.
The organist struck up the first chords of “Abide with Me.”
“Come,” said the widow, pulling his arm. “Come up front. You have to sit with us, the family.”
Vogel went with them to the first pew. The widow sat to his right, the daughter to the left. He listened to the minister’s eulogy and discovered that the dead man was named George and had lived an ordinary life, a bourgeois one. He played golf. He had a lot of friends. He had been a fair boss and ran the family Chevrolet dealership honestly — the business half of which Vogel surmised ought to have gone to his brother Harold. George had been active in the Rotary, a supporter of the church, enjoyed family vacations in national parks when the children were little, sponsored a Little League team, was a pillar of the community, loving husband, devoted father, and so on. Through it all, the widow held Vogel’s hand tightly and wouldn’t let go.
A golf buddy spoke briefly, also the dealership’s sales manager, then the minister, but no one else.
The organist started a quiet rendition of a hymn Vogel recognized: “God Our Help in Ages Past.”
Vogel rose with the others. The casket was right in front of them. The family approached it for the final farewell, the widow going first. She leaned down and whispered something. Then the children stood together. The daughter wiped at a tear and her brother put his arm around her waist. Then the three of them looked toward Vogel, smiling, nodding. He stepped forward and looked down at the face of the dead man. The funeral home must have worked hard to make him look so healthy, with suspiciously full cheeks and lips just shy of rosy.
Vogel looked down at the face of the dead man. The funeral home must have worked hard, used make-up, managed to make him look almost healthy; the cheeks were suspiciously puffy and rosy. He looked closely. There really wasn’t any resemblance; yet Vogel felt strangely moved. He leaned down and kissed the corpse’s cold forehead and, as he looked up, spotted the spinet. He went over to it, and everybody hushed, including the organist. He sat, opened the lid, looked over his shoulder at the widow, then began. He played the first two minutes of a piece of Bach’s.
When he stood up, everyone was staring at him, some with surprise but others almost with reverence.
The widow rushed to his side, put her hand on his arm, her head on his shoulder. She was weeping.
“Oh, Harold. That was so lovely. George never mentioned that you played. What was that beautiful music?”
“A capriccio by Bach. It’s called ‘On the Departure of a Beloved Brother.’”
Hearing the title, the widow nearly collapsed from excess of feeling. Vogel supported her until the son and daughter took over.After that, the four of them lined up beside the coffin to receive the mourners who had also queued and came forward, two-by-two. There was much hugging and condoling until the formality dissolved in a general milling about. That was when Vogel made his escape, when took his departure.
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Reader Comments
Bravo! Just the right balance of humor and heart.
I Love this misunderstanding! Glad there will be more!