Funeral Shelter

Hm.
Home.
Funeral home.
Far from home.

Would there be beautiful flowers beckoning all the visitors with their angelic aroma? I thought it would be nice and warm and she would look as beautiful as ever, wearing her favorite pink dress and her bandana. She always wore it when I came over to make spaghetti and apple pie. Maybe it would smell like her favorite perfume: the pink-looking one that sat on the dresser next to the cherub statue she always put her rings on before she went to bed. I remember how her house smelled like the untouched Avon flower soaps that sat in the corners of all three bathrooms for years.
This place didn't smell that good. It smelled like cardboard and dryers and it was cold as fish sticks still in the box. The flowers smelled like stale dirt and there were only dim, yellow lamps in the corners, except over the wooden box.
There she lie; Lillian, dressed in her ugly white dress and a wig on. Aunt Marianne probably picked it out for her. I was stuck there with all my annoying cousins, wondering why they weren't playing her records: the ones recorded of her in La Boheme at the Met in the 40s. you'd think they could have taken the time to lug out a record player and show her some respect.
I walked up to the casket with my mother to pray, seeing Lillian's perfectly toned, solemn, unsmiling face; this was not my grandmother. My grandmother always smiled.
I said one last goodbye, kissed my hand, and went to place it on her cheek; now the flesh-toned, rough mound of concrete it had become. I guess it was good that my first was so young. It made the last dozen a lot easier to get through. I am a creature of habit. Cardboard and stale dirt aren't so bad...