Bellow's Funeral Home

The American Flag at Bellow's Funeral Home is always at half-mast. I first noticed it when I attended a service there for the star quarterback of the high school football team. He was crushed by a barbell while weightlifting. His family buried him in his jersey. He was clutching a football signed by the entire team. The day before, George Hennard had driven his pickup truck through the front window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, TX, killing twenty-three people and injuring twenty-seven. He killed twenty-three people and injured twenty-seven. I noticed it again, a few months later when my family held my grandfather's services there. He died of lung cancer. They buried him in a loud polyester shirt, clutching rosary beads and a few cartons of cigarettes. My mother worried he'd be pissed if they didn't have Benson & Hedges in heaven. Three days before my grandfather died, Eric Rudolph, a Pro-Life activist, set off a bomb at the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, GA killing two, and injuring hundreds. I now live two miles away from the funeral home and drive it by every day. Only now, I don't consider my family. I don't consider America. I fixate on the groundskeeper. I decide he's as terrible at his job as most people are at living. When I drive by, I often imagine him drunk in filthy overalls, clunky work boots and a sunburn, mowing the lawn on the morning of my wake the smell of freshly-cut grass welcoming those who are still willing to grieve.