The Undertaker's Daughter (46 page)

You heard various stories about your father’s war injury from various sources. Before reviewing his medical records, which version held the most credence for you? Do you regret not asking more questions of your father growing up? If Frank Mayfield were alive today, what questions would you ask him?

The version my father told me of having been shot while guarding a building conjured the clearest, simplest explanation. I could image it more easily than the ride in a jeep during which an arrested enemy soldier grabbed his gun. That version sounded too much like Hollywood.

It is more difficult than you might imagine to sit at the bedside of a dying parent while each of you attempt to disclose your secrets, your innermost thoughts, your regrets, or even an expression of love. Again, it’s a great scene for a novel or film, but it rarely happens in real life. Perhaps more people are choosing to tie up loose ends and heal old wounds now, I don’t know. I didn’t because my father was very ill and in great pain. My younger sister’s and my entire thrust at the end of his life was to help him feel more comfortable, not to ask him questions.

Even though I was quite inquisitive of my father when I was younger, I wish I’d not accepted silence for an answer. I wish I could have found a way to talk to him about his experiences in the war without hurting him in the process. I’d like to know what he and Miss Agnes talked about all those years and what, exactly, made their friendship so strong and unique. I’d like to hear him articulate what drove him. My mother shared with me her experience of being married to him, for which I’m grateful, but I would also like to know if later, in his short life, he had any regrets about how hurtful he had been. I would ask him what dreams he had for his future life, the life he might have had before he became a boy soldier, the point at which his life changed forever.

You describe in the epilogue Miss Agnes’s “donation” of her house to the public, and your most recent return to Jubilee, including a walk through your childhood home. How do you look back on Jubilee now?

The axiom that all small towns are the same drives me quite mad. I don’t think that’s true. Jubilee was particularly insular at that time, which breeds its own unique small town idiosyncrasies.

Other than the time I’ve spent writing this book, I don’t think about Jubilee.

Two stories stand out in particular about how your sense of your own mortality changed rapidly: a delivery to the funeral home of miniature coffins, and the death of Linda Mayberry. In retrospect, do you agree with your parents’ decision not to hide death of any kind from you and your siblings? How do you believe children should be introduced to the idea of death?

It would have been futile for our parents to try to hide death from us. Death was in our home, in our lives twenty-four hours a day. It would have been difficult to enforce a rule that downstairs was off-limits, not impossible, but difficult. Pandora’s box . . .

I don’t have children and I’m not a teacher, so I wouldn’t presume to offer advice on how to introduce them to the idea of death. It’s not too hard to understand the dying process; it’s black and white, from antemortem, to perimortem, to postmortem. What happens next is the complicated part of their education. I would hazard a guess that the explanation partially depends on the family’s religious beliefs, if they have any.

On the final page, you note the recent
“surge in people who seek to demystify the subject of death and its history and rituals”
. Discuss your participation in the Death Movement. What impact do you feel this movement has on the culture of death?

I have one foot in, one foot out of the Death Movement. My interests lie in historical practices, the inclusion and romanticization of death in literature, and the tantalizing search for

Here in Britain, people are much less comfortable talking about death, especially their own, than they are in the States. People are living longer, and because of that many haven’t seen a dead body until they’ve reached their thirties. Compared to Victorian times when the population was dying in large numbers from cradle to mid-age, that’s shockingly late in life to witness a first death. There is an entire spectrum of attitudes toward death today; people are both fascinated and frightened by it, and for many it represents something macabre and even unclean; for others it is a forbidden subject. In some parts of the world today there are people living with the dead, either in their homes, or in cemeteries, such as the tombs of residences in the City of the Dead in Cairo.

The Death Salons and Death Cafés I’ve attended have been incredibly respectful, informative, and revealing. Many people leave cheerful and unburdened. It’s not a party; those attending who have little time left keep things appropriately sober. I think this movement will grow as the number of elderly in our population increases.

KATE MAYFIELD
is the coauthor of
Ten Steps to Fashion Freedom
and
Ellie Hart Goes to Work
. She attended Western Kentucky University before moving to Manhattan, where she graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She now lives in London.

Visit her on the web at
www.katemayfield.com
.

FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
authors.simonandschuster.com/Kate-Mayfield

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Copyright © 2015 by Kate Mayfield

“To Be Sure” by Larry Sorkin. Used with permission courtesy of Larry Sorkin.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition January 2015

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Jacket design by Regina Starace

Author photo by Daniel Regan

Cover images © Volyk Ievgenii/Shutterstock, © RoyStudio.eu/Shutterstock, © Phiseksit/Shutterstock; raven © iStockPhoto; house, ambulance and coffin provided by Apple Hill Antiques, State College, PA; little girl: Stoehr family photo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mayfield, Katherine

The undertaker’s daughter / Kate Mayfield. — First Gallery Books hardcover edition.

pages cm

1. Mayfield, Katherine, 1958—Childhood and youth. 2. Authors—United States—Biography. I. Title.

CT275.M465173A3 2014

920.72—dc23

[B]

2014006727

ISBN 978-1-4767-5728-5

ISBN 978-1-4767-5730-8 (ebook)

 CONTENTS 

Author's Note

To Be Sure by Larry Sorkin

Prologue

Chapter 1: We’ve Got a Body

Chapter 2: Gravediggers, Shrouds, and Lemon Meringue Pies

Chapter 3: The Burial-Vault Battles

Chapter 4: The Woman in Red

Chapter 5: My Miss Havisham

Chapter 6: Napping in the Casket Room

Chapter 7: The Gentle Art of Embalming

Chapter 8: Funeral-Parlor Poker

Chapter 9: Mausoleum of Desire