I stand at the church parking lot entrance and stop each car. 

The surface lot is small and we’re saving it for those who NEED to park closer. Please park in the parking garage, yes, the one RIGHT there, and get your ticket validated inside for free parking. 

I smile, nod, and point.

It’s a thirty-two car line and each is filled with zombies who use canes or walkers requiring close parking spots, or who can’t hear my words over the cold wind, or who don’t tolerate a change in plans well. I should’ve saved them a spot—can’t I see the ninety-year-old hunchback in the backseat, with her eyes closed, and her blue hair flapping in the wind of the open window? 

I am so sorry but our lot is now full. 

A man grumbles and speeds off without listening to my instructions. I wonder if he will just drive home instead of attending the funeral like he had planned. 

Larger-than-a-face sunglasses in one driver’s seat refuses to stop and I must step back or risk a crushed foot, and then the car circles the lot. The person realizes there are no parking spots and returns to ask what the hell is going on. I share the parking garage information while the person acts like I’m a beggar at their car window. 

The deceased has a lot of friends, family, fans, and I think this must be the hottest ticket in town. 

She used to come sit in my office, cross her legs, and chat about her adventures. A world traveler, she had a friend in every country. I appreciated her snide comments about my boss. She’d giggle as if we shared a secret—we both saw through the minister’s facade, and she knew he was unkind to me. Every time she arrived, the church office lit up—a break in the clouds, a changed light bulb, an open window stirring the dust on the stack of undone things on a cluttered desk.

Back in the parking lot, the memorial service is about to start. The line of cars is gone, so I rush to the sanctuary to enter as the prelude swells off the piano. I sit in the back in the last open rickety brown chair. Every pew is filled with gray clouds and glasses, and I’m in the corner thinking of how she crossed her legs, how she would send money orders to her friends in impoverished countries, how she was a candle in the dark.

Mourners keep coming, even after the opening words—the sanctuary door opens and I wonder where they parked—did they figure out how to enter the parking garage on their own? Was my parking lot duty in vain? Eventually, the latecomers are lining the back of the church, and I give up my chair to an elder and rush downstairs to watch the stream of the service on the TV. 

But, downstairs, the Caring Team is at work. They spent all yesterday setting up and dressing up the tables, arranging flower centerpieces, and now they’re setting up the food, coffee, picture frames, and napkins. I strain to hear the livestream on the TV for the ladies are clucking, and yes, they do sound like chickens, even though I know that’s cliche, and I turn and glare at the leader of them all, a woman who is beyond kind and loving, who I could never say a bad word about, and I think she knows why I’m staring, but it doesn’t stop the group’s incessant talking, which has grown to a roar of whispers. More mourners have followed me downstairs and now are sitting at the round table, our chairs facing the screen. I can deal with the background noise if it’s just me, but the guests who join me are unknown faces, and they might be close friends, or even family, arriving late for who knows what reason—perhaps the parking situation is worse than I can imagine, and I can’t allow their grief to be overtaken by the setting up of food and drink. I jump up and head to the first woman I see, taking the heating dish off the flame and back on, and ask if she can tell the group to settle down. It isn’t the clink of serving trays or the plates clatter that annoys me, it’s just the chatter. Every decision—should this chair go here or over there? Should this meat be brought back to the kitchen or left out? Should more tables and chairs be added?—is discussed at length by at least five women. 

I know all these women knew our lost friend, but for some reason they’re not watching her granddaughter, now a grown woman, on the screen as she shares a story about the mornings they drank coffee in their kitchen, or how her grandma taught her what it means to be a teacher, a leader, a woman. No, the church ladies only seem to care about this room where all the people will enter after the service.

Now seated, I’m confident that my comment will get results, and it does for about five minutes, and then the chat begins again. A light rain that turns to hail in moments. Each question ends with a thunder of answers and they are back again to move this or that, to try to arrange the room so it’s absolutely perfect. I turn around and glare again, and guilt creeps up my throat, but I must stand up for a woman who can no longer stand up for herself. The other mourners at my table are sniffling, and blowing into tissues, and I imagine their conversation later that evening in their homes:

Did you hear those old church ladies? Such a gaggle, so loud, so rude! How heartless! 

Does this reflect on the church? On me?  Then my mind twists to my ex’s funeral, and how impersonal it was—only the minister had spoken and he hadn’t even talked about his life—it was about Jesus or his dead father-in-law. No stories from his friends or family. I had sat quietly holding my son’s hand wishing someone would speak about the life the man lived, the son we had together, this boy now without a father. But no one did.

I want my funeral to be like this one on the screen—people actually talking about the deceased and what she did. But no one will be able to hear the eulogy downstairs because the Caring Team ladies will be analyzing the placement of a flower arrangement or the temperature of the meat. Who am I kidding? There won’t be enough people to warrant an overflow into the reception area. I’m not a well-liked person, and perhaps it’s because I’m the woman who directs the traffic into the garage, the one who prepares the service program and gives the musicians and family a deadline because I need to create, print, and fold it, the one who glares at the most loved woman in the whole church because she’s whispering about nonsense while the funeral stream is running on the TV and there’s a table of people trying to hear the service. 

Driving home later that evening, I cry. Finally I can think about my friend and how I never visited her after her stroke. I didn’t want to see her with her mouth slack, her words jumbled, her body parked in a wheelchair. One of the church members who was lucky enough to get a seat in the sanctuary took the mic during the open sharing and said he saw her every week and they laughed and joked. I regret my fear that regulated me to a card I sent. One card—right after the stroke. She lived four years after that event and I never saw her again. I wasn’t a real friend. 

Which leads me to thinking about my other friends who I’ve known for many years, and how I don’t stay in touch—too overwhelmed with my own shit to make a call, or write a letter or email, or plan a lunch. I think about how there will be no one at my funeral, and no one to direct traffic or create the memorial program, so I resolve to design my own program and just leave off the death date. Surely one of the church ladies can fill that in for me when the time comes. 

-Cat Dixon

Cat Dixon is the author of the new poetry collection What Happens in Nebraska (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2022) along with five other chapbooks and collections. She is a poetry editor with The Good Life Review. For the last 13 years, she has worked as a church admin and an adjunct in the writer's workshop at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.