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2001-12-13 - 10:15 a.m. Wendymail: Carpet and Dead Bodies I'm tired of whining about being sick. You're tired of reading it. So, I'm posting another Wendymail story today. This was written about three years ago when Rob and I were struggling with recarpeting the house. I sense we are heading for another home improvement strage, so it's seems an apt time to post this. Rob and I are essaying true adulthood. We are attempting to furnish an entire room without using anything previously owned by a family member. Of course, choosing carpet and paint to match the new furnitures leads to the dread redecorating phase. Honestly, choosing carpet is the biggest pain. Paint, they can match anything, but carpet is exasperating. Especially because I was scarred as a teenager. Now, we come to the connection to dead bodies. My father is a cemeterian. If you want a practical explanation, that means he handles cemetery property of all sorts- mausoleums, tombstones, markers, graveyards, cemeteries, and burials. Trust me, this type of occupation makes for a very different sort of family dinner conversation. I learned to carve tombstones before I went to kindergarden. Family vacations were always accompanied by diversionary trips through the local cemeteries to see what the competition was doing. And my father can identify any type of marble or granite, a trick which has slowed down progress in many a shopping mall. For my part, I was never much interested in the family business. My brother, however, worked for dad from the time he was twelve and I was ten. Now comes the pivotal moment where my brother must prove his worthiness and manhood. When I was about fifteen, my parents were redecorating. They, too, had reached that exasperating carpet crisis in their quest for the perfect shade of sherbert orange. (Don't ask.) My hometown doesn't even boast a movie theater, must less a carpet store. To solve this decorating dilemma, they decided to go straight to the source, to day trip from our home in Marion, in the southwest corner of Virginia, to Dalton, Georgia, home of almost every carpet mill in the United States. My brother, Thad, now 17 years old, was left in charge of the business. Someone needed to watch the office, because death does not take a holiday. They left at the crack of dawn one rainy Saturday. I got up around mid-morning, watched cartoons, ate sugary cereal, and curled up on the couch with a book. The phone rings. Sighing, I crawl out of my warm nest. It's one of the local funeral homes. The funeral director, Mal, has a client who's family owns space in dad's mausoleum, and there has been a death in the family. They need to make arrangements to use the space for a service that weekend. There's one hitch. The deceased is of substantial size, and they're not certain he will fit in the standard space. Oh dear. This is a delicate situation. I hang up the phone and go wake my brother up. After rousting my grumpy sibling, a vocabulary expanding experience, I return to my novel, duty done. Little did I know that I was buying myself center court seats for the ensuing tennis match. My brother explodes out of the house, drives to town to discuss this with Mal. He's back about fifteen minutes later. He calls the secretary, the bookkeeper, and all of the cemetery crew. He leaves again. These people start returning his calls. I get off the couch and answer the phone, explaining the situation over and over. My brother comes back and I deliver all these messages. He has a thirty minute discussion, spanning three phone calls, involving various paperwork and scheduling scenarios, then charges out again to meet the crew chief. Mal calls back, asking about the schedule. I take the message. The secretary calls back. She's called everyone in and opened the office. I take the message. The crew members call back and ask about times. I take the message. I am wondering if everyone he needs to talk to is calling him back at the house, why does he keep leaving it? Where does he keep going? This entire morning is beginning to play like a comedy of errors. But, wait, there's more. Thad storms back in, this is about his fourth trip through, and begins interrogating me concerning how to find mom and dad. I look at him blankly. He knows as well as I do that they're in Dalton, Georgia. It's not like I got up at four a.m., and asked them for their itenary while they were leaving. So, he calls information and leaves a message for my father at every single carpet outlet in Dalton. You have to realize this is tantamont to calling every furniture store in Lenoir, North Carolina; every dairy in Vermont; every beef market in Austin, Texas. After an hour on the phone with information and various carpet stores, he blazes out of the house again. Now, let's take stock. So, far my brother has spent nearly three hours, rousted about ten people, and left emergency messages across an entire state for my father. He has yelled at me, he has yelled at the secretary, he has yelled at the long distance operator. Here's why I am an engineer - I'm the only person involved in this entire farce that suggested perhaps taking a measurement would settle the quandry. My father calls back, in a blind panic. The explanation now takes about ten minutes and a scorecard. Throughout the diatribe, my tone rises in both volume and righteous indignation. This entire thing has gone beyond ridiculous, and no one will listen to me. Finally, in a tone only an exasperated teenager whose entire Saturday morning has been disrupted can achieve, I shout, "I really don't understand what the problem is; it either fits or it doesn't!" This is greeted by dead silence. "Dad?" "Dad??" "Dad!" Finally, I hear a fainting wheezing. I'm thinking my father has had a heart attack. My mother comes on the line. "What did you say to your father?" Apparently, dad was laughing to hard, he couldn't speak; he couldn't breathe; he couldn't even chortle he was so breathless. He was leaning against the wall just shaking from head to toe. I sigh and explain the situation to my mother. She suggests I take my brother her sewing yardstick and settle this question. (Like what have I been saying here? Like we're too stupid to think of this? Well, okay, I'm the only one's who's suggested such a prosaic course of action, and I'm only the little sister, so what do I know?) My father, in a weak voice, comes back on the phone. All will be well. He's coming home to bail my brother out. My mother is saying a few things I didn't think she knew how to say. At this point, she has multiple suggestions for how to apply that yardstick. For the next five years, my father opened every sales conference he ever taught with the 'It either fits or it doesn't fit' story. I was cooed at by all of his business associates as the clever little daddy's girl. It was cloying. It was infuriating. In Texas, it would've been justifible homicide. In New York, the would've sent me for counseling. In California, I would've at least gotten incense. In Marion, I got petted on the head. This marked the beginning of my life being used as comedy relief, and ever since then, I have held a deep seated grudge against carpet. It might even be the root of my hatred of Martha Stewart. Or perhaps, she's just easy to hate. � � Scribble to Theo previous - next �