10 November 2007

The Fallen


The key about visitations in Arlington is where to park. I had an official letter I needed to deliver to the widow, and wanted to show my respect.

Mardy One confirmed to me that the funeral home was death on illegal parking. It is a symptom of the explosive growth in the Ballston neighborhood north of Buckingham. The County sanctioned the wild building spree with expansive zoning regulations to encourage high-density use along the Metro Orange Line, and the funeral home is just down the street from the station.

Mardy 1 has been busy of late, and we did not see much of her at the pool this year. She is a great lady, a Steeler's fan, and a veteran of a long relationship with a State Department cookie-pusher. The end of that is how she wound up at Big Pink, and was part of the Fifth Floor Crewe when I lived up there.

She was always good for a glass of wine and some laughter, along with Mary Margaret, who lived next door.

I was renting up there, scheming on how I could become a homeowner, or at least a concrete box owner, again. I hadn't heard from the lawyers in months, and thought I would be free.

It seems like a giddy time, looking back on it, before the Murphy Bed adventure down at poolside and all the other antics. Mardy One was running a dog-walking business, which is a bigger deal than you would think.

People are so busy, everyone working, and the nature of relationships being what it is around here, most seem to be banking on pets rather than humans. Thus, it is completely possible to fill up the day walking other people's dogs.

I don't ask about people's finances. Mine are scary enough, and I don't need to trespass in that territory. It may be that she just wanted some additional companionship, beyond that of the dogs and cats and empty houses. She was walking a Mastiff up Fairfax Drive from the condos halfway to Virginia Square when she saw the sign in the window of the mortuary across from the Car Pool bar.

The Car Pool used to be an actual dealership, back in the day, and the theme for the layout is purely automotive, with billiard tables where the sales floor and service bays were. It is going to be something else pretty soon, something tall, I imagine.

The mortuary wanted some help, and the sign said the hours were flexible. She had time in the evening, since people can walk their own animals when they get home, and she resolved to stop by after she got the Mastiff his daily exercise. The dog tugged her all the way past the Eat N' Run, almost to where the Flat Top Grill used to be. Once she got things turned around again and took care of the dog's most pressing concerns, she cut across the parking lot to get to the park beyond the main library. The funeral home has the biggest sweep of black asphalt in the neighborhood, except for the bus yard, and they have a special contract with a tow truck to keep it open for the benefit of the bereaved and not the commuters.

Mardy One stuck her head in at the mortuary after she got the dog safely back to the condo. Who would keep a dog that big in a little apartment, I asked her, and she just shook her head. People are strange, and so long as they are willing to pay, she is OK with it. Everyone adapts to what they have to do.

There was a woman in black who opened the door for her, solemn, and Mardy One   asked who she should talk to about the sign. The woman gestured slowly toward a corridor on the left, past a sign posted for the Schmidt Viewing, and she wound up with an equally solemn Funeral Director named Bob.

The mortuary was in the market for a greeter, like the lady in black at the door. Mardy One was in sweats and her Steeler's hat, but she said she had attended a lot of formal functions when she was married to the State Department and could be quite presentable if the need arose, and had plenty of black outfits. She took off her cap and showed her salt and pepper hair, and it seemed to do the trick.

Bob told her that she could have an evening shift, two hours normally, for the evening viewings. The duties were simple, he said, and revolved mostly around opening the door and looking grave for the people that were coming to the visitations.

You would think that is a hard fit for someone who has been known to whoop while jumping in the pool in her underwear, but apparently there is a well of sadness in all of us.

That is how Mardy One became a professional griever, and how I had the scoop on how to park at the funeral home without getting my car towed away.

She has a lot of stories about the grieving business, and it is not as glamorous as you would think. The mortuary is close to Arlington National Cemetery, and is a logical destination for those military members moving to the County until the end of the world.

Business in that direction has been brisk of late, though it had swelled with the passing of the heroes of the World Wars. There is a provision in the rules for the cemetery that veterans who have won combat decorations are entitled to internment in the National Cemetery, whether they stayed in the Service for a career or not.

We are just about done with the veterans of the First War, but we are at a high point for the hundreds of thousands of vets who are eligible from the Second. Of course, there have been several wars since then, but demographically, the preponderance of eligible candidates are the men and women who beat Hitler and Tojo.

I know more about how this works than I want to. I was assigned to the personnel desk at the Navy Annex on Columbia Pike years ago. All of the officers were expected to handle the Death Watch, which was to cover the after-hours issues that came up when the civilians from Casualty Affairs went home for the day. We had one rotation of seven watches stood once a week for seven weeks, plus training.

I was on my first one when one of our active duty members passed away in Spain, so the news came in wee hours of the morning, and the Chief woke me up to make some notifications.

It turned out that the guy was married to an Australian lady he had met on a port visit there, and his folks were here in Arlington. That involved getting him to Virginia for a viewing at the very same mortuary before getting back on the plane for Sydney. the government was obligated to pay for the cargo fee for the whole trip, but not the hearse from Reagan National to the funeral home and back for the viewing. We had to check the rules carefully.

I followed his progress across the once-a-week watches, and made a call to Australia on my last one to confirm the sailor's arrival. The voice from the outback was tinny and faint, but the woman confirmed that we got him there for burial.

The uncomfortable thing about death is that it seems to move in with you if you stick around long enough. I was visiting the mortuary to express condolences and view the remains of a Captain I used to work with. He was a few years older, retiring in the late eighties, but not that old.

He did two tours in Vietnam, which was unusual, and was the last American assigned as the First Coastal Zone before the thing fell apart.

He was in-country before that, as an liaison officer, which is probably where he was exposed to Agent Orange. He died of complications related to the chemotherapy, and was fighting the VA about the service connected nature of his leukemia.

I liked him a lot when I worked with him in the Pentagon after he retired from the Navy. He enjoyed a good cigar in the courtyard, sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs near Ground Zero, and I would join him out there after they banned smoking in the building.

I talked to the widow for a while, and some of the family members, though I did not know them and felt awkward, as one does in the face of death. It seems my associate had been in a battle with the Veteran's Administration, which refused to grant him more than a 60% disability over his illness. They were still evaluating his claim when he died, which you would think would be positive evidence of its worth.

Instead, the Department closed the case.

In the coffin, the Captain looked serene, but pale, with his arms crossed over his dress blues. The uniform was old enough that the gold braid had that salty look we so prized, and the rows of ribbons over his Joint Staff Identification Badge were slightly faded, but not enough that they needed replacement. The Government would have taken care of that, if asked, as they do for the kids coming home from the wars in the Middle East.

I watched the video playing on the flat-screen that had pictures of his life, and saw the man I had known in several of them. When it seemed appropriate, I left. Mardy One had told me that if you gave your license plate number to the Mourner at the door there would be not problems, but I had not taken any chances. I parked at a meter down the block.

It was Sunday, and the parking was free.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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