Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash
I spend my days watching the same show over and over again. The setting is the Rutherford Funeral Home and Crematorium across the street from my house, and the cast consists of characters suffering the greatest loss anyone can know. I sit behind double-paned glass and wait for a new family to ring the bell, then watch as the funeral director welcomes them in. Some days there may only be one family, other days there are two or three at least. If I wanted, I could open the windows to catch snippets of grief between the rush of passing cars, but I don’t believe in being intrusive at such an intimate moment. And I don’t like the mustiness of the moss that grows below in the shadows of the eaves.
My parents died when I was a toddler. I don’t remember them. I bounced from one foster home to the next, so I don’t have any family to speak of. And romantic relationships seemed too much work for too little return. Despite being nearly sixty years old, I’ve never personally dealt with someone who has died. I don’t know what is said on the other side of the funeral home doors. I imagine clichéd words like “sorry,” “loss,” and “need” floating fleetingly between the funeral director and the bereaved like breath in winter. The difference between knowing and imagining what is said, is like the difference between Technicolor and film noir.
Without any family or relationship entanglements, I admit that I have no one to handle the arrangements when I die. No one to ring the bell across the street, write the obituary, and select the urn. And that’s fine by me. I have chosen to be alone. I imagine my landlord finding me dead one day in my chair next to the windows. I shouldn’t require too much fuss. My belongings will easily fit into one box and I will easily fit into an average body bag. The walls in the living room will probably need a fresh coat of paint, though, and because of that, the landlord will not feel deeply sorry for me. I imagine him telling the funeral director, “There’s nothing to be sorry about. The only real loss I feel is the steady income of his rent. All I need is for you to take him off my hands.”
Once, I nearly became part of the story I’ve watched play out a thousand times on the other side of my windows. On a particularly sunny day, a twenty-something young woman trudged up the steps of the funeral home and stood for moment in front of the large double doors. At least twice she turned to walk away, but then shook her head and turned back to the doors. A silver bracelet glittered in sunlight when she reached to ring the bell. After a few seconds, she rang the bell again. And then again a few more seconds after that. I scooted my chair closer to the windows when she began pounding on the doors, her bracelet seeming to shed sparks with every knock. When she finally turned to leave, her mouth opened wide when she saw me sitting in the window. As she scuttled down the steps to cross the street toward my house, I pushed my chair back from the windows, turned out the lights, and shrank into the darkness of the living room. Car horns honked frantically for a moment before my doorbell rang. I froze in my chair.
After several rings, she began to call out, “Please. I know someone is in there. I saw you in the window. Please. Do you know who owns the funeral home across the street? No one answered the door. Please. He died last night. I need to make arrangements. I forgot my phone at home. Can you let me in to call . . . . Can you call someone? I just need someone . . . .”
More car horns drowned out her words, and then I heard a man’s voice, comforting yet professional. “I am so sorry,” the voice intoned calmly. “I was in the basement and lost track of time. Please, come across the street and tell me what you need.”
Slowly, her sobbing and the man’s muffled reassurances grew more distant, and I lifted my head to look out the windows. I watched as the funeral director slowly led the woman across the street, his arms wrapped tightly around her, and took her inside. I flopped back in my chair, unnerved by this deviation in the script, and stared for a long time into the blue distances of the sky outside. I let its blueness pull me deeper and deeper into a void that I imagined as not much different than death. I imagined my ashes swirling in that void, weightless and unencumbered by anything. But then I imagined them co-mingling with the ashes of countless strangers, coalescing into something that included me but wasn’t me. I jumped out of my chair, snapped the drapes shut, and retreated to my windowless bedroom until the next morning.
Despite the events of that day, I have grown to love the predictability of my life alone here behind my storm windows. I never let myself grieve with the mourners I watch come and go. They are like actors in a show where each episode has different special guests, the plot is always the same, and I get to imagine who their characters and backstories are. As the newest family ascends the steps across the street and rings the bell, I sigh contentedly when the doors open and the funeral director welcomes them inside. I take comfort in knowing that this show will more than likely end like all the others, with smoke rising from the crematorium’s chimney and filling the sky the way static used to fill my TV screen every evening when the time came for stations to sign off.
Kip Knott is a writer, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio. His third full-length book of poetry, The Other Side of Who I Am, is available from Kelsay Books. A new poetry chapbook, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott and read more of his writing at www.kipknott.com.
