Things are . . . arranged

Those who have to know do know, for right now.  C and I met in Dublin, then went on to Comanche together to break the news.  Not that Mother was surprised when we showed up at the library.  She’d had an overnight bag packed for days against having to go to Arlington on no notice.

Arrangements for the body were easily done; C had already been in touch with the co-owner of the funeral home the family’s used for years.  We sat down with him and settled everything there was to settle in half an hour.  Pete, the funeral home owner, told us “What we normally do with cremations is to send the body to a firm in Fort Worth that does the actual cremation, but since JP’s already in the Fort Worth morgue and there won’t be a service, there’s no point in bringing him to Comanche only to send him right back to Fort Worth.  We’ll arrange it so the crematory can go pick up the body directly from the morgue, and they can mail the ashes to you once they’re done.”  I knew, but had forgotten, that human ashes are often sent by mail to whoever’s to get them.  Pete went on to say that the funeral home usually charged $1,250 for a cremation, but since there wouldn’t be any actual effort or expense to him in this case beyond making some phone calls, he would only charge us five hundred dollars—his actual cost—plus a couple of administrative fees.  The total contract still came out to less than six hundred dollars.  Pete said when his partner finally saw the contract he’d no doubt piss and moan about how were they supposed to make any money if Pete went around making cut-rate deals like that, but he, personally, couldn’t justify charging us $750 for making two or three phone calls and faxing a couple of documents.  That kind of behavior is one reason C has a great respect for Pete.  I also think it doesn’t hurt, as I mentioned later in passing, that Comanche Funeral Home has had the burying of our families all the way back to my great-grandfather in 1952, and they just might have done my other great-grandfather in 1947 and my great-grandmother in 1936, now I come to think of it.  Mother kept going on about how quickly everything was arranged, while she was in something of a whirl, but C had already talked so much with Pete that there was little left to do yesterday save sign documents to arrange for the cremation, which C did as executor.

C’s already arranged with JP’s apartment management to secure his apartment, and he’ll go on and pay the January rent to give us more time to deal with whatever mess there may be.  After the new year he and I will have to set a time to go to Arlington, go through the apartment (and the storage unit, if there’s anything still in it—JP may have sold a bunch of the household furnishings that he’d brought back from Florida for living money), and figure what’s going where.  C says JP left one of Dad’s antique clocks to T, along with an issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book—which I rather doubt T will much want; she’s a lot too butch for that.  He also left me all the family photo albums he had.  An earlier version of his will he left with me specified the proceeds of his estate were to go to AMFAR or some other AIDS research organization.  I don’t know whether he kept that provision in the latest will, although I rather expect so.  I want to get T to go along and help whenever we do what we do.  C, if I know him, is likely to get impatient in his usual ADD-ish way and throw up his hands, in which case having T along for backup could be a big help.  Mother agreed to adopt JP’s cat, which they were going to pick up from the animal shelter in the next day or two; C had warned the shelter to wait for instructions.

I agreed to write the obituary, which will be a little bit of a chore, picking out what to tell and what not, not to mention how to tell what gets told.  The ME’s official cause of death is “complications of AIDS,” although the family all bloody well know better, but we agreed that for the obit I’d work the old “after a long illness” wheeze.  I also agreed to take care of calling the more-distant family members who need to be told, although Mother and I agreed today that job can wait until after Christmas.  JP’s not going to be any less dead then, and since whatever memorial service we have will certainly be no sooner than January, and probably not that soon, there’s no point in turning everyone’s Christmas upside down.