It was five years ago this week that I visited my parents’ graves for what was probably the final time.

I gathered silk flowers from my home, which was being emptied, arranged them into glorious bouquets, and took treats – for both them and me.

You don’t see it in the photo above, where I was just setting up for our picnic on the picnic quilt that always lives in my car, but it took me an entire box of Kleenex to get through that picnic and what I had to share with them that day.

This was it. I wasn’t coming back. They were already buried six hours away from where I lived then – and now that distance is measured in days, not hours. There’s no one left there to visit now, and it’s not on the way to anyplace.

Dad loved popcorn and cheese cubes with turkey and salami, and Mom absolutely lived for Hershey bars.

Of course, I knew “they” couldn’t enjoy them in the here and now, and I was probably just feeding the wildlife. It was more about the ritual, the expression of love and caring, tinged with regret that I can no longer steal cubes of Dad’s cheese (he just smiled at me) or give Mom oversized Hershey bars.

Mom smiled at me too, but for an entirely different reason.

Recalling sitting on that quilt, discussing things with Mom and Dad while baking in the summer heat, much as I remember doing on the farm, makes me smile now too.

Facebook memories brought that day back this week. As I lay in bed in the silent night, reliving that hot July day picnicking with Mom and Dad, I realized that their graves aren’t the only places I had “left them something.”

Until that night, I didn’t realize that I had done it twice, once for each of my parents, but never for anyone else.

Dad

All of my regular readers know that Dad was actually my stepfather, and that he had lost his only daughter, Linda, as a baby.

No one can ever take another person’s place, but Dad told me twice that he “got his daughter back” when he married Mom. My allergies immediately acted up.

My biological father died when I was a child, so I felt like I had hit the jackpot and lucked into the best father ever when Mom married Dean.

I worshipped the ground that man walked on.

Dad died in 1994, following a horrific, progressive disease. His death was a devastating loss. On top of another loss just the year before.

Now, Dad was well-known for his orneriness, practical jokes, and sense of humor. Perhaps what made it even funnier was that he was such a quiet man – the last person you’d expect as the culprit.

So, when we all gathered at the church for his viewing and found no casket, we patiently waited for the funeral home to show up with Dad.

But when that visitation hour passed, and there was STILL no Dad, we began to worry. Mom was frantically calling the funeral home, which was about 20 miles away, but no one answered. She was a nervous wreck.

My brother was laughing. Most people were quietly and awkwardly visiting, hoping nothing was wrong.

Our imaginations were running wild. Had there been an accident? Was Dad lying someplace beside the road in his Sunday finest? Let’s face it, Dad was already deceased – he couldn’t die twice if there was an accident, but what if, what if Dad was at the wrong church or some such thing? Did they bury him by accident?

Finally, the hearse pulled up outside the church, and we heard doors slamming. Mom rushed out and asked, in her “not my church deacon” voice, where the devil they had been. Well, devil might not have been the word she used, but whatever. I was all too personally familiar with that voice, and I knew they were in BIG TROUBLE!

As it turned out, they had gotten the times mixed up, making Dad late for his own funeral.

Perhaps it was a combination of nerves and grief, plus Mom clucking around like an angry wet hen, but that whole scene just struck me as incredibly funny, and I started to laugh.

Mom gave me the side-eye like only mothers can give, so I tried to stifle myself – which made me laugh even harder, snorting through my nose.

About this time, the men from the funeral home were trying to carry the casket in the back door and up the narrow steps into the church. At the top, there was a right-angle turn, and let’s just say the casket and the men didn’t quite make it.

Well, they kind of made it, but one of the men got pinned between the casket and the corner of the wall in a very awkward place. He was also trying very hard not to let on, but you’d have had to be both deaf and blind to miss what was happening.

My mother was following this entourage up the stairs, and even she stopped talking as the scene unfolded.

By this time, I was laughing hysterically beyond any semblance of composure, tears streaming down my face, and so were most of the guests. Laughter like that is highly contagious. Most of the men were trying to help, but we had to back Dad down the stairs to free the trapped man.

I’m laughing as I write this. I can see it all over again and just can’t help myself.

Right about that time, the most inappropriate thought popped into my head. I couldn’t help it. I wondered if Dad had paid them to ensure that he was late for his own funeral.

The ultimate prank. He certainly WOULD have done that – in a heartbeat. Only question that remained was DID HE? And of course, we’ll never know.

All things considered, with everyone still laughing and crying, we were hardly in the proper frame of mind to begin a funeral, so the minister suggested that we have the viewing and recompose ourselves before the funeral. You really can’t start a funeral with everyone laugh-crying, and we were already so late by that time that it didn’t matter.

Mom had dressed Dad in a suit. I had only ever seen him in a suit a handful of times.

His wedding to Mom, my wedding, Gary’s wedding, church pictures, and maybe one other time.

Dad hated suits. He was a dyed-in-the-overalls farmer, and those overalls would have suited him much better than a suit. However, I’d wager that Dad knew Mom would dress him in a “funeral suit” for his funeral, so maybe this was his way of commenting on that.

Regardless, by the time it was my turn to step up to the casket for the final time, as grief-stricken as I was, I certainly appreciated the levity that he had introduced that day. Yes, I’m crediting him!

I dug around in Mom’s purse and found a small pair of scissors. As an Avon lady, she had literally everything in there – her purse was bottomless. I cut a lock of my hair, found a ribbon or piece of string buried in the depths of Mom’s purse, tied it around the lock, then lovingly tucked it into Dad’s starched shirt pocket for eternity.

I patted his hand one last time and told him I loved him as I smiled through my tears. I bent close and whispered that he had done a fine job as my tears dropped onto his white shirt. I swear – I swear – I saw a smile flicker across that man’s lips just for an instant.

I hadn’t planned it, but I sent Dad on his last journey with a little bit of me in his pocket. Forever.

Mom

Mom was an Avon lady for the last quarter century of her life. She loved to dress up and look her finest, so Avon was a perfect fit for her. Plus, it gave her an excuse to check in on the elderly and those with challenges in the community. She was always taking food or something to someone. Every. Single. Day.

Mom retired in the spring of 2005 at 82.

One of her longtime customers took this photo of Mom on her last day making Avon deliveries.

Mom wanted to retire with her best sales year ever, and I purchased a lifetime supply of soap, bubble bath, and Skin-So-Soft. Maybe two lifetimes’ worth. Trust me when I tell you that I’m still using Avon products.

Every Christmas, we all received our favorite Avon items in our Christmas stockings from Mom. Plus, Avon Care Deeply chapstick. Didn’t matter – man, woman, child, elderly neighbor – someone in line at the grocery whose lips looked chapped. You got Avon chapstick.

As far as I’m concerned, one can never have too much chapstick. I have chapstick, aka lip gloss, everyplace, including one or two of Mom’s that I still cherish and keep in my nightstand and desk drawer.

When Mom retired, she was one of her own best customers and stocked up on things.

Just this past week, my husband found a little wooden box that was in a drawer in his nightstand in our old house. He opened it, and voila, there they were.

Three chapsticks from Mom.

Vintage Avon Care Deeply from 2002, 2004, and 2005. Mom really liked Jim. He received the first one even before we were married. He has now kindly given all three to me. Now that’s true love.

How can chapstick make you cry?

Mom passed away unexpectedly in the spring of 2006. She had a stroke and managed to crawl into her closet and put her “pretty shoes” mostly on. No one is quite sure how she managed that, but she did. That’s how we found her. She loved shoes.

Mom’s funeral was much more subdued than Dad’s. My brother and I met with a different undertaker, so she would actually arrive at the church on time.

I selected Mom’s clothes along with her favorite “pretty shoes.” The funeral director told us that he could not get high heels on her feet. We told him that whether he could get them fully on or not, he was to get them as far onto her feet as possible – and do something to make sure they didn’t fall off. I didn’t care if he tied them on. She needed her pretty shoes. She would haunt me forever otherwise.

Saying goodbye to a parent just before the casket is closed is one of the most difficult things you will ever do.

Mom always had everything in her purse, including spare Kleenex, which she often tucked up her sleeve at her wrist, under her watch band so they would always be quickly available.

She was always handing out Kleenex at church to anyone who needed it, and probably several people who didn’t actually need one, but she thought they might. She accused me, accurately, of never having a Kleenex when I needed one. How was I supposed to predict that?

After Mom passed, we found clean Kleenex everyplace. In her pockets and purses, of course, used as bookmarks, and even tucked into the door handles inside her car.

On the day of her funeral, I had a full box of Kleenex with me. I was clearly going to need them and couldn’t depend on Mom for that anymore. She would have been proud.

As always, I had multiple Avon chapsticks, not the imposter kind, in my purse and pockets. Somehow, Mom would have known if I cheated with something other than Avon.

Standing there, saying my final goodbyes, I realized that I could NOT send Mom off into the afterlife without Kleenex and Avon chapstick, both of which she used religiously. So, I tucked a few Kleenex into one of her crossed hands and a chapstick into the other, closed my eyes for a minute, said a little prayer, then nodded for the casket to be closed as I wiped my eyes. They had been patiently waiting for me. I was struggling. Part of my heart was in there with her.

The funeral itself was a blur. When the minister finished, Mom was loaded into the back of the black hearse for her final ride along those oh-so-familiar roads to the cemetery. The little white church was at a farm crossroads, and the cemetery was probably a dozen miles away, down country roads too narrow for center lines. No one needed them anyway. The only people out there were members of local farm families who all knew each other, slowed down, and waved.

Suddenly, the hearse slammed on the brakes. We were in the car immediately behind, and I had a very up-close view of its brake lights, just before we came so close that they disappeared from view. I waited for the crunch, but fortunately, we managed to stop with an inch or so to spare, but we were quite shaken. Both figuratively and literally.

Someone had run the stop sign in front of the hearse, which missed the car by a hair’s breadth. For me, that was déjà vu, because years before, the only life-threatening accident I had ever had occurred a few miles on down that same road, under the same circumstances – minus the funeral procession.

I couldn’t help but think about the supreme irony of potentially being killed in Mom’s funeral procession, on that same road, some two decades later. I was more than a little shaky already, given the circumstances, and that didn’t help one bit.

But then, an even worse thought struck me.

What if Mom’s chapstick had been knocked out of her hand and was rolling around beyond her reach for eternity? How could I condemn her to that fate? If you know, you know.

Did she drop her Kleenex?

But perhaps more importantly, did her shoes fall off?