1. The Wake

Disclaimer: This post is quite long, so I’ve divided it into four separate ones, corresponding to breaks in the narrative. Just keep scrolling down to read the other installments (all numbered). Also, it’s still rough and I may come back and flesh it out later.

Thanks for your time… I’ve heard from more of you than have commented here that you’re reading and you’re interested. I really appreciate your time and your patience.

Orchard Park, NY – “NAGEL-Florence T. (nee Gowgiel) Of Orchard Park, NY, October 21, 2007, beloved wife of Richard Nagel, M.D.; loving mother of Nancy (Wayne) Nichols, RN, Richard (Gloria) Nagel, MBA, CPA, David (Mary) Nagel, M.D., Gregory and the late Kenneth Nagel; sister of Edward Gowgiel and the late Helen (Raymond) Mack; sister-in-law of Robert Nagel and the late Christine Nagel; also survived by nine grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. Florence was a beautiful, warm and friendly lady with a sweet and gentle spirit who always had a smile on her face. She always placed her family and friends ahead of herself. In a small way, this was shown by her talent for remembering the names of anyone she came across. Besides her love for her family she enjoyed cooking, reading, and movies especially Westerns and Mysteries. Florence was an honor graduate of Hutchinson Central School, Buffalo, NY where she served as vice President of her graduating class. She served as a den mother in the Cub Scout Organization and helped her four sons attain the rank of Eagle in the Boy Scouts. The family will receive friends…”

(Published in The Buffalo News from 10/25/07-10/26/07)


This is my first wake, my first funeral. Prior to this, I’ve been lucky – no close relatives or friends have passed away.

Passed away, that’s what we say. We don’t say died, that would be too harsh. We use the more gentle phrasings of passed or gone on, as if the loved one has just fallen asleep for a long time or left somewhere on vacation. But the fact is that death isn’t gentle, and most of our words reflect that. It’s a tearing away from “this mortal coil.” It’s a finite, measurable end. But we cannot seem to bring ourselves to admit that’s what has happened, so we’re tender with each other, cautious of what we say in whispered voices, no matter how much the warning sirens are screaming in our heads that somewhere, something has been torn.

She lies in the oak coffin. She wears a green suit and its color is bold and more vibrant than anything I’ve seen her wear in the last ten years. Mostly, she wore thin, open-backed hospital gowns because they were easy to put on (or have put on her). The prints, if they had any, were faded from too many washings, and the colors always seemed to blend into a uniform grey-green in my memory – a sort of colorless color, devoid of cheer.

I say she, because that only seems polite. Because she is not here, she is not that collection of carbon-based cells in the shiny, oaken box. That, there, is just a shell and it is hollow and empty. While her soul was still within, her body betrayed her. It started breaking down when she was just a girl, arthritis racking her body until she could not take it anymore and she left, leaving it behind. She is gone. We have only it to remember her by.

The jacket collar is buttoned up high and the frilly, turtleneck blouse frames her face, which the undertaker has caked with makeup in an attempt to make her appear as only sleeping, and not departed. But he couldn’t have known that she never wore makeup and that the only indulgence she allowed herself was a monthly hair color and permanent. Instead of making her look more life-like, the undertaker has created a macabre mask. The eyelids, underneath glasses, are too blue, the skin is too pink, the blush too much the color blood. Her lips, painted red and outlined with a cosmetic pencil appear too large and drawn out for her small form. They look like the lips of a fish, spread out and turned down at the corners.

She lies with her hands crossed on her lap. In her right, she holds a single, white rose. A ribbon, tied just below the blossom, declares this to be a gift from her first great-grandchild – a one-year old girl, blonde-haired and blue eyed, full of newly sprung life.

I have an urge to touch her skin, partially from tenderness and also from what I’ll call journalistic curiosity, having never touched a dead body before. Morbid, to be sure, but I cannot help feeling that I am not looking at her. I am looking at an it, an artifact of what once was. She has become a preserved, museum piece. All around her are photographs of her life, the historic record on display for the viewing public.

The exposed skin of her hand is like that of her face, plastered and painted. Foundation has been liberally applied to her fingers, but it has cracked, writing a tiny, criss-crossing map on the backs of her hands, like the floor of a dried-up lakebed. Her hands appear abnormally normal as they lay gently positioned, clasping the flower and a rosary. Before death, her right arm swelled up from infection and reactions to pain medication, rendering it useless and bloated. It would lay on the armrest of her chair, exposed and helpless, as if it were a fish beached on some deserted shoreline. Now, it has been drained and the fingernails have been painted (she never painted her nails). She holds her hands together like she is praying. Or saying that, “Look, come see… the pain is gone.”